


Blister in the Sun

by zeldasayre



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Davenzi, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Neighbors, Skateboarding, Summer, Swimming Pools, Trans Male Character, druck - Freeform, side hanna/sam honestly came out of nowhere but now i ship it???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-06-24 09:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19721065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldasayre/pseuds/zeldasayre
Summary: David only lived in town over the summers.His name hadn’t been David long— not since Matteo last saw him, two summers ago. He’d started to transition two years ago, and his mom refused to let him leave that first summer. Matteo had tried to downplay his disappointment, but no one was convinced.Matteo had known David was a boy since they were twelve, camping out in his backyard and whispering with only a flashlight to disrupt the dark. But he hadn’t seen him since he came out. David didn’t post any pictures of himself on social media, and Matteo hadn’t known how to ask for selfies without making it weird.But David was coming home this summer.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Strangers Things season 3 got me with those pool scene aesthetics what can I say

Summer always came over Matteo’s town like a white T-shirt dipped in tie-dye. Suddenly there was color everywhere; not just the neon green of the trees or the bright blue of the sky, but _everywhere_. It was like people were convinced the sun would be scared back behind the clouds if they didn’t summon it out with hot pink swim shorts and highlighter-yellow sundresses. Even his anti-establishment, non-conformist friends, better known around here as ‘the stoners,’ had drank the Kool-Aid this year. Jonas had dyed his hair fuchsia, and Sam had showed up on Matteo’s driveway yesterday afternoon with “azure and cyan” box braids (which she kindly clarified when he called them blue.) Jonas had dyed his hair pretty soon after Matteo had come out at school, actually, so it was starting to fade. Matteo knew it hadn’t been a coincidence. Jonas always had his back— and any distraction he could offer, he did. He’d also shaved his eyebrows off a couple weeks later.

Nausea-inducing brightness aside, Matteo always looked forward to summer. The Schreibners lived next door— Andrew Schreibner; his second wife, Andrea (Matteo had many thoughts about their matching names, but he digressed,) and their daughter; Laura. Andrew had another child, from his first marriage, but his ex-wife got the better end of the custody stick, so David only lived in town over the summers.

His name hadn’t been David long— not since Matteo last saw him, two summers ago. He’d started to transition two years ago, and his mom refused to let him leave that first summer. Matteo had tried to downplay his disappointment, but no one was convinced.

Matteo had known David was a boy since they were twelve, camping out in his backyard and whispering with only a flashlight to disrupt the dark. But he hadn’t seen him since he came out. David didn’t post any pictures of himself on social media, and Matteo hadn’t known how to ask for selfies without making it weird.

But David was coming home this summer.

“Luigi,” Jonas said, probably not for the first time. He was wearing a white shirt with a bright yellow happy face on the front. Further proof that the neon summer cult had converted him to their rancid ways. “It’s your round.”

Matteo accepted the controller he now realized Abdi was holding out toward him, selecting his nicknamesake character from the Mario Kart selection and attempting to focus his attention on the game, instead of David’s driveway, which was visible through Jonas’s living room picture window.

“If you’re not going to take this seriously, Florenzi, we can always put on _Riverdale_ —”

“Don’t you dare.” Carlos’s girlfriend, Kiki, had gotten first her boyfriend, and then innocent bystanders Abdi and Jonas addicted to the garbage fire of a show. Only Sam and Hanna remained on Matteo’s side of this argument, and they weren’t here.

“Your boyfriend’s not getting here ’til Saturday, so just chill, dude.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Matteo said, going stiff at Jonas’s teasing. Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure David was his _friend_ anymore. It’d been a long time since the summer before sophomore year, and though they’d stayed in touch, neither of them were great texters, nor did they FaceTime. Besides which, David only used social media for art, and Matteo for memes.

He wanted them to be friends. He’s missed him. But he didn’t know if the feeling was mutual, and the longer he waited, continually looking over at that forsaken driveway, the more nervous he got. They’d always had fun together, always gotten along, but they’d been younger. A lot changed between fourteen and seventeen. No one had called Matteo a stoner back then— he hadn’t even smoked. He and his friends hadn’t been weird for hanging out around the skate park all the time; everyone did that. Now the skate park was for losers and dropouts. The popular kids were all jocks and rich kids, driving around in their Jeeps, hanging out in the empty lot behind the peach orchard or scaring middle schoolers away from the public pool.

David was a quiet, artistic kid who didn’t make a lot of eye contact the last time Matteo saw him. But he’d always been athletic; only avoiding team sports because he didn’t want to be on girls’ teams. Now that he’d come out, maybe _he_ was a jock. Maybe, at his school back home, he was popular, cool, and hung out with the types of kids who never talked to Matteo or his friends except to make fun of them or ask where to buy weed.

“Whatever, dude, just relax, OK? He’s gonna be stoked to see you. He’s taken hormones, not had a personality transplant.”

Matteo hated when Jonas read his mind like that. Except when he didn’t. But just now, he hated it.

“I am relaxed, man. You’re high.”

“Correct. You could do with getting a little higher.”

Matteo accepted the proffered bong when he lost the round, but he just kind of held it against his chest, staring hard at the screen so he wouldn’t look out the window again. Jonas was right. He should relax.

Easier said than done.

*

Matteo squinted his eyes at the sunlight streaming in through the gap between his bedroom curtains. He pressed his pillow over his face, but his mom’s voice carried up the stairs. He heard the word ‘pancakes’ and opened one eye, slowly sliding the pillow down again. He sighed. He loved when his mom made pancakes. But he wished she wouldn’t do it before eleven AM.

Matteo pushed himself into a sitting position and called “Coming!” out to his mother, running a hand through his bed-head and yawning as he stood up. He parted the curtains and peeked through, though he knew it was pointless.

David’s bedroom was still empty, the curtains in the exact same position they’d been for months. Matteo could see David’s hideous orange bean bag, which leaned against his windowsill, just peeking like a gopher looking out of its hole.

He turned from his window and headed downstairs. His mother smiled at him when he turned the corner to the kitchen.

“Chocolate chip,” she said, holding a plate out to him.

“Thanks, mom,” he said. His phone buzzed; he looked down at it. The group chat. He shoved it back into his sweats pocket and sat down at the kitchen table, his leg bouncing as he ate.

“So,” Matteo’s mom said. “Tomorrow’s the day, right?”

He would have played dumb, but who was he kidding? “Yeah,” he said. “He’s s’posed to get here around five.”

“It’s still strange to hear that,” his mom said— presumably referring to the ‘he.’ Matteo rolled his eyes.

“Mom—”

“I know, I know! I got it. David. He/him. You don’t need to drill me any more, Matteo. I’m just saying it’s strange, is all. After all these years.”

“Whatever, mom. You changed your last name when you and dad got divorced and no one ever said that was weird.”

His mom flinched, and he felt guilty. But not that guilty. He knew how hard it had been for David to be mistaken for a girl all those years. He hated his mom staying stuff like that.

“Right. I made you a sandwich for later. It’s in the fridge. I have to run some errands, so I’ll see you later.” She sighed as she grabbed her purse and keys. “Be good today.”

Matteo grunted, looking down at his phone as she closed the front door behind herself.

Thirty-one hours. Matteo stared at the last text David had sent him, a picture of his train ticket, so Matteo could see the time he was getting in. He hadn’t said anything else— just the photo. Matteo had sent back a string of enthusiastic emojis which he immediately regretted.

He put his plate in the sink and ran upstairs, grabbing the Altoid tin where he kept joints, and his skateboard.

Hanna met him on his way to the halfpipe, kicking up her board to walk next to him. “Hey, killer,” she said. “Excited about tomorrow?”

“Why?” Matteo asked, playing cool.

She snorted. “Yeah, OK.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re allowed to be excited, stud. It’s been a long time. You guys were close.”

The past tense she used there grated at his insides like he was a soft chunk of cheddar cheese. He gave her a tight-lipped smile.

She left him alone once they got to the half-pipe, running towards her waiting girlfriend. Sam grabbed Hanna’s cheeks and smushed her face, smacking a kiss onto her lips like she was blowing raspberries. Her blue braids next to Hanna’s orange undercut looked like a Warhol print. Matteo’s stomach twisted, as it always did, looking at them. He didn’t mind being single when he felt like the only gay kid in town, but the ease with which the two of them had found each other always made him feel like it was _him_ , not scarcity, that caused his romantic life to be non-existent.

“Luigi!” Jonas and Carlos called out in unison. Matteo grinned and sprinted up the halfpipe, grabbing onto Jonas’s waiting hand and allowing himself to be pulled up. He opened the Altoid tin, holding his hand out for a lighter. He breathed easier a moment later, leaning back against the wooden rails. Jonas took the joint next, speaking through the smoke.

“It’s starting to get actually hot,” he said. “We might have to bite the bullet soon, boys.”

“I’d rather get heat stroke,” Abdi said.

“You guys are so stupid,” Carlos said. “There’s nothing wrong with the pool.”

“Yeah, whatever, man.” Jonas rolled his eyes but handed him the joint. “You just like staring at your girlfriend wearing a bikini and doing the breast stroke.”

“Leave Kiki’s breasts out of this,” Carlos said, but he was grinning.

“I wish I had breasts to leave out,” Abdi said, staring at Sam and looking distinctly forlorn.

“You wish you had breasts?”

“Shut up, idiot.”

Matteo bristled. He wondered if he was oversensitive about this kind of thing; the jokes his boys made sometimes. Would they actually make David uncomfortable, or would he make David uncomfortable by pointing them out, or reacting himself?

He sighed. He wasn’t used to not knowing these things. He and David used to read each other like _Dick and Jane_ , no confusion, no questions necessary. They’d told each other all their secrets, their innermost thoughts and dreams. But innermost thoughts and dreams aren’t the same when you’re in middle school and when you’re about to be a senior, getting ready to apply for colleges, about to be thrust out into the real, actual world. He worried he’d say the wrong thing. He worried he’d say the _right_ thing, but David wouldn’t care— wouldn’t read him back, wouldn’t be interested, anymore, in understanding each other. In being friends.

He was driving himself crazy. And the weed wasn’t helping. Which was not fair at all.

He stood up, and kicked off his board.

“Don’t break your neck, Luigi.”

Matteo plunged down, letting the thrill of the fall chase away his worries and fears, letting the air hitting his face breathe into him a different kind of high. The jocks and richies could have their Jeeps and tailgates; Matteo wouldn’t give up this feeling for all the popularity points in the world.

*

The analog clock at the diner ticked so slowly Matteo thought it must be broken. Amira, his former lab partner and semi-friend, stalked over and leaned on the counter, glaring at him. “Matteo. Go home. You’re annoying the customers.”

He looked around. No one was so much as looking his way.

“OK, you’re annoying _me_. It’s barely twelve thirty. Time isn’t going to magically jump forward by you drilling holes into that clock with your eyes.”

Matteo sighed and put his forehead down on the countertop.

“I’m excited to see him too. But he doesn’t get here ’til five. So go do something, or buy more food. You’re loitering.”

Matteo checked the cash in his pocket. He had two dollars, one of which was ripped nearly in two, and a selection of coins, some of which were foreign. He sighed and stood up.

“You’re nicer to the other customers,” he said.

“They tip me better. Get outta here.” She turned away, merciless and grinning slightly.

Matteo sighed again and ran a hand through his hair, letting the door chime closed behind him. Jonas and the boys were at the pool with Kiki. Sam and Hanna were probably making out somewhere. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. And he couldn’t very well stay out here in this blistering heat. Matteo frowned up at the sun and slouched toward his bike. Someone seemed to have toppled their ice cream cone on the pavement beside it. His handle was sticky, and he groaned and wrinkled his nose.

Laura Schreibner was out on her front lawn when he got home. She was sitting on a beach chair and letting herself get sprayed by the sprinklers. Her bathing suit had a popsicle print and her sandals were lifeguard-red.

She saluted him when he raised a hand in an awkward wave. “Coming over later?” she called over the sprinkler’s repetitive song.

“Yeah, I— I dunno, maybe, um.” He held his bike with white knuckles, shaking his head at himself. “See you.”

“Later, man.”

He wheeled his bike into the garage and closed the mud room door behind himself, leaning against it and closing his eyes. He pulled out his phone. Four more hours.

There was a Phineas & Ferb marathon on. Matteo settled deep into the couch with a giant bowl Hot Cheetos, despite just scarfing down a grilled cheese and a large milkshake at Dean’s Diner.

The front door opened and slammed shut, and Matteo craned his neck to see who’d arrived.

“Luigi!” Jonas yelled, as if there was any need to project in Matteo’s barely-two-story, paper-thin-walled house.

“In here,” Matteo called. “With Phineas. And Ferb.”

“Oh, tight,” Jonas said, throwing himself over the side of the couch, grabbing what was left of the Hot Cheetos from Matteo’s lap. He cracked up at one of Doofenshmirtz’s spiels, and grinned over at Matteo.

“You’re getting the couch wet,” Matteo said.

“Oh, yeah. Hot water’s off at my house. Can I use your shower?”

Matteo nodded, trying not to look like he was trying not to stare in the direction of the kitchen window, and David’s front yard, and David’s driveway.

“Chill, Luigi. Just a couple more hours, right?”

“One and a half.” He felt his cheeks heat. “I mean. Yeah. Whatever. Go shower, you stink.”

“Like chlorine, maybe, but nice try.” Jonas stood up anyway, and soon the sound of water and the annoyingly dulcet tones of his singing voice carried downstairs.

Matteo didn’t move, not while Jonas showered or when he came back downstairs, not when he left, shouting rude affection behind him before the door slammed shut again. He stared at the TV screen and tried to pretend he wasn’t waiting. Then he heard the sound of a minivan through the window he’d tried to pretend he hadn’t left open for the express purpose of catching that sound. His neck nearly snapped as he looked over, toward the kitchen. He waited maybe a single second before leaping up, fast-walking down the hallway, and going up on his tiptoes to stare out the faded squares of glass in his side door.

David was home.


	2. 2

It was 8:54 PM and Matteo was still in his house. 

He didn’t want to go over right when David arrived; he didn’t want to look like he’d been waiting by the door. Then he figured, I should give him and his family some time to catch up, he hasn’t seen his dad or his sister in a long time, either. _Then_ he thought, he’ll want some time to unpack and unwind, it’s a long trip and he probably won’t want visitors right away.

But now David had been home almost four hours, and Matteo hadn’t seen him yet.

David _had_ texted Matteo that train ticket picture, which Matteo thought meant he wanted to see him. But he hadn’t texted him today; not on the train or in the car or in the nearly four hours since he’d been home. Of course, Matteo hadn’t texted him either. 

Matteo groaned into a couch cushion. The _Phineas & Ferb_ marathon had ended hours ago, he didn’t know what he was watching now, but he knew it was awful.

It was late now; late-ish, at least. Was it too late to go over? Should he wait ’til tomorrow?

Maybe David would come over _there_. He stared in the direction of the front door, willing David to appear, imagining he could hear knocking. Nothing. 

His phone buzzed. He leaped at it. Jonas. He sighed.

_how is he?_

_who_

_funny guy luigi. mr schreibner, esq_

_dk_

_???_

Matteo righted himself and trudged up to his bedroom. There was no point loitering downstairs, waiting for something that wasn’t going to come, trying to will himself to move when he knew he wouldn’t.

_havent seen him yet_

_hes late? was his train delayed or something?_

_no, hes home_

_???_

Matteo paused outside his bedroom door, realizing David might be in his room, realizing he might walk in there and make eye contact with him. Would David think it was weird he hadn’t come over, if he saw him in his room?

_luigi_

_what_

_u didn’t go say hi????_

_not yet_

_wth, man. after all that?? you’ve been waiting for this day for weeks_

Matteo pocketed his phone and went back downstairs. Maybe he’d make some pasta. He hadn’t eaten a real dinner, after all.

The front door swung shut, and Matteo leaped and turned at the noise, his eyes huge and his breath caught.

His mom raised her eyebrows at him. “That’s more energy than I’ve ever seen you display without an immediate threat.” She put the groceries down on the kitchen counter as his shoulders slouched, and he glared at the traitorous front door.

“I bought mallomars,” his mom said. He turned and began digging through the bags.

She laughed. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you’d be at the Schreibners’. Or did you just get home?”

Matteo spoke with his mouth full of chocolate and marshmallow. “’ven’t gone yet.”

His mom stared at him. “Is everything all right?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s fine, mom.” He grabbed two more mallomars and backed away, towards the stairs. “I’ll be in my room.”

In his haste to escape her inevitable questioning, Matteo forgot he was avoiding his bedroom. The door swung shut behind him, and he looked up. Right at him.

David was taller. His hair was cut short, as he’d always wanted. His jawline was sharper now, more prominent, and it was hard to tell from this distance, but Matteo thought he saw some facial hair growing in on his upper lip.

He looked different. But he was also the same boy Matteo had always known, and something in Matteo broke open at the sight of David, finally, looking like himself. 

David raised his hand in greeting. His mouth tugged up on one side, and Matteo’s stomach plummeted as he realized something else, something that hadn’t quite computed right away, at the sight of his long-missed friend. David was kind of… hot.

Matteo waved back. It was weird, this realization. He’d recognized other friends as being hot before; namely Jonas. But it was different this time, pulling down on his stomach like a tug-o-war rope, and he didn’t know why. 

David held up a finger, signaling Matteo to wait, and searched his bed for something, coming up with his phone. His gaze darted back and forth from Matteo to his phone as he typed. Then

Matteo’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He scrambled to pull it out.

_fancy seeing you here_

Matteo bit down on a grin, typing a quick response. 

_i was in the neighborhood_

_me too. y didn’t u come over?_

Matteo went stiff, but another text came through soon after.

_long trip today I’m gonna pass out soon. ill see u tomorrow?_

_yes,_ Matteo sent. _definitely_

David smiled at him before pulling his curtains shut. Matteo sat down on his bed, chewing on his lip, flexing his fingers, wondering what was wrong with his stomach. He jumped up. “Mom,” he called out as he hurried down the stairs. “Do we have any Tums?”

*

Matteo knew immediately that something was up. Under all circumstances resembling normal, Sara Adamczyk and Leonie Richter wouldn’t be caught dead within fifty feet of the skate park. They didn’t even approach Matteo or his friends for weed— they sent one of their various sophomore lackeys, or whichever football guy they were shamelessly exploiting that week. But not only were they clearly visible as Matteo drew closer; so were Mackenzie and Heather Hill, and at least three underclassmen whose names Matteo didn’t know, but who, from the way they dressed, were probably also cheerleaders or rich girls. 

He looked over at Jonas, whose eyebrows were high on his forehead, and raised a brow himself, in question. Jonas tilted his chin, and Matteo finally got close enough to see what— who— Jonas was indicating; and who the girls were gathered around.

David.

“David,” he said, out loud, fully against his own will. He closed his eyes briefly, beyond fed up with himself, but when he opened them, David was looking at him. His breath in caught and tripped over itself, so he made a strange sort of choking sound, but he was far enough, at least, that it seemed safe to hope that no one had heard him.

“Hi, Matteo.”

Matteo walked cautiously through the parted waves of popular girls, feeling like a strange variation of Moses with a skateboard under his arm instead of a staff, and a joint in the pocket of his cargo shorts.

He saw the confusion on the girls’ faces, and he realized, abruptly, that they didn’t recognize him. Not _him_. David. None of them had known him that well, anyway, what with him only being around during the summers. To them, he was just some hot stranger who showed up for the summer, like something out of a Nicholas Sparks book. 

And they were clearly wondering, how does hot mysterious stranger know _Matteo Florenzi_ , of all people?

David held his hand out, and Matteo met him nervously in their handshake, an abridged mashup of the _Parent Trap_ and _Finding Nemo_ handshakes which they’d come up with in the seventh grade. He managed it, anyway, and the girls only looked more confused. But David was smiling at him, the sun illuminating his dark eyes like paper lanterns, and Matteo didn’t really care if Leonie Richter was giving him stink eye. 

He still wished they would leave, though. He wanted to tell David he’d missed him, but it seemed wrong, or weird, or something, to do it in front of a crowd of onlooking hot girls. Like his words would have too much weight under their heated gazes; would be misconstrued.

“What’s up,” he said instead, and immediately felt like a moron.

David shrugged, his smile wavering, his brows knitting slightly as Matteo avoided his gaze, feeling unpleasantly surveilled with all the girls there.

“How do you two know each other?” Leonie asked, and Matteo couldn’t tell if her tone was as nasty as he thought, or if he was over-reading, overthinking, over-reacting, like always. 

“Oh,” David said, “Matteo and I go way back.” He grinned at Matteo, almost suggestively, and Matteo’s face went hot. 

He felt a strange surge of annoyance. What was David playing at? His tone seemed intended to imply to the girls that they had, or were, dating. But David was straight. Was he using Matteo’s sexuality to get this group of girls off his back? Or was he just teasing? But why would that be funny? What was funny about being gay?

Matteo held his skateboard up. “I’m just gonna…” He trailed off and turned around.

He heard Mackenzie laugh behind him. “He’s so faded.”

“Is he ever not?”

A quiet chorus of giggles followed behind him as he kicked off, heat running up his face and down his neck. He looked over at David just before plummeting down. David was frowning.

*

  
“Matteo!” 

He stopped at the sound of David’s voice, annoyed at this own feet for ignoring the will of his head. He’d wanted to play it cool, walk away, be unaffected and nonchalant. Instead he was standing there, waiting, as David jogged up to his side.

“I just— I— Andrea wanted me to ask you to come over tonight. For dinner.” He pushed a hand through his thick hair, his gaze intent on Matteo for a moment, searching, it seemed, before darting away, and focusing on anything else. 

Matteo frowned. His _step-mom_ asked him over? He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He’d thought about going over on his own. Acting casual, pretending whatever happened earlier had been nothing, hadn’t been digging into him like a painful hangnail all afternoon. Now he was being _invited over_ courtesy of David’s _step-mom._ Like the sad kid next door who didn’t have any friends, who parents pitied, and made you invite to your birthday party.

They used to go over to each other’s houses without invitation or even warning; all hours of the day, not bothering to even knock, helping themselves to whatever was in the kitchen, and settling in comfortably to wait if the other one wasn’t home. Now _this_.

“Sure,” he said, trying not to grit his teeth. “I’ll see you at seven.”

David met his eyes and nodded, his expression unreadable. Matteo tore his gaze from him with a gargantuan effort and strode away.

If he’d had any doubts before that David was hot now, and if those doubts hadn’t been defeated by the sea of women who’d surrounded David at the skate park, they would have been finally put to death when the Schreibner’s front door opened at seven PM. 

David’s hair was tousled and brushed to the side, vaguely messy in the kind of way that probably took a lot of effort. He was wearing a patterned button-down, kind of a dad shirt, but it didn’t look like a dad shirt on him. Matteo saw for the first time that he had a septum piercing. He stared at it, unable to look away even as his mind registered that he’d been looking too long.

“Hi,” David said. He sounded kind of out of breath.

“Hi,” said Matteo.

“Come in,” David moved aside hastily. Matteo toed off his shoes and took in the entrance hallway. Nothing had really changed. He was so aware of David standing close behind him. He’d never had to be aware of him before; nervous in his presence. It had been so easy. Matteo wanted to throw something.

“Matteo!” Andrea smiled when she saw him, holding her arms open for a hug like she, too, hadn’t seen him in two years; instead of two days, max.

“Hi, Mrs. Schreibner.”

“You’re not _still_ doing that! Andrea, you know that.”

Matteo didn’t say anything, giving her what he hoped was a friendly smile. 

“We can go up to my room while we wait—” David started, and Matteo’s heart leaped with hope at the suggestion; at the normalcy that might come with it. Andrea cut David off.

“Actually, dinner is about ready— would you boys be dears and set the table for me?”

“Sure,” David said. Matteo wondered if he heard disappointment in his voice. Of course, maybe he just didn’t feel like setting the table. Or eating his step-mom’s famously bland meals which David historically referred to as “Caucasian Cuisine,” in no kind tone. Matteo bit back a grin at the memory, following David towards the cabinets, collecting the dinner plates from where he knew they were kept.

Laura almost made him shatter two glasses against each other when she came downstairs, shouldering him hard. “What’s up, Florenzi.”

“Hey.”

“You coming with tonight?”

“Huh?” Matteo looked at her, and over at David. David peered at him from under his eyelashes. Matteo’s stomach flipped. He drew his brows together, confused. “Where are you guys going?”

“Kickback at Peach Place.” This was what the popular and party kids called the lot by the peach orchards, where they could regularly be found drinking and smoking and probably making fun of Matteo and his friends for how much they drank and smoked.

Matteo had absolutely zero interest in going to a kickback at Peach Place. And David hadn’t even asked him along. But he _did_ want to spend more time with him. And Jonas would probably be thrilled. He was always there, cruising for his typical one-week stands. He tried to get Matteo to come with time and time again, to no avail. Actually, he might be annoyed at him for going for David when he’d never gone for him.

Matteo shrugged, a belated and nothing response. 

“You should come,” David said. Matteo looked at him, and felt hungrier than he realized he’d been. He was glad dinner was ready, after all.

“OK. Yeah. I’ll come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates will probably not always be this quick just... warning y'all khsdlgkh


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was just setting when Matteo rode up to Peach Place, his bike kicking up a cloud of dust in front of him when he braked.

He pushed down the kickstand and left his bike in a pile of others, running a hand through his hair as he approached the crowd of teenagers slowly, like a wildlife photographer trying not to startle a family of foxes.

“Luigi!” Jonas shouted, destroying Matteo’s subtle approach like a heavy hammer on a wine glass.

Matteo walked to him anyway, accepting the beer Jonas offered. 

“Man, finally! Only took you three years to get out here! What’s up, man?”

“Not much,” Matteo said, looking around for brown skin and black hair.

“Ah,” Jonas said. “You’re here for Mr. Schreibner.” He chuckled. “Well, you’re not alone there, dude. Check it out.” He pointed with his beer, and Matteo followed the dark bottle in the direction of the circle of stumps which surrounded a sad little bonfire, close by the pickup truck where the keg resided. 

David stared at the fire as he tilted a red cup into his mouth, Leonie and Mackenzie leaning in toward him on either side, shameless in their arm touches and hair tucks, their smiles dazzling in the firelight as the sunset turned purple.

Matteo gripped his beer hard in his hand. Just then, David looked up, and met his eyes. He smiled and waved. Matteo smiled back, immediately, instinctually. But then he hesitated. Had that been a genuine gesture? Or was he just being polite?

“Go over there, dude.”

Jonas shoved him forward, and Matteo spluttered, but he went. 

“Hey,” he said, standing, looking down at three of them. The fire looked small, but up close, and in the summer evening warmth, it was surprisingly hot. 

“Oh, we’re good,” Mackenzie said. She smiled at him. “Thanks though.”

Matteo’s stomach dropped. 

“What?” David asked, looking between them, confused.

Mackenzie looked confused, too— genuinely. “Wasn’t he—” Not even addressing him directly.

“I don’t sell, Mac.” He smiled icily at her. She glared back— she hated the middle school nickname. 

David cleared his throat. “Matteo, wanna get a refill with me?”

Matteo was clearly holding an unopened bottle, and peering down from above, it was clear enough that David’s red solo cup was at least half-full. Still, he nodded, and David stood, grinning him as he did. Matteo licked his lips, his pulse quickening as he followed David to the keg. David filled his cup to the brim and beamed at Matteo, crouching down to slurp at the rim until it was safe to pick up without spilling. Matteo laughed, and then they were just smiling at each other, and it felt right, for a moment. Like it used to be. Then David ducked his head down, swallowing without taking a drink, and Matteo noticed people staring at them, and his face felt hot, and he fisted his hand at his side. 

Maybe it wasn’t that David didn’t like him anymore, or want him around. Maybe he was just embarrassed by him. Maybe he _was_ a popular jock back home, and he knew he was shaping up to be the same here, and he didn’t want Matteo to screw it up for him. Matteo could hardly blame him. Hanging out with him _was_ a sure path to _not_ being cool around here. 

“Your meme game has only gotten better over the years, you know,” David said to the ground.

Matteo laughed, startled. “Thank you very much, it’s my art. I’m thinking of going to a specialty school for it.” He toned his voice down, saying in a voice that was intended to sound like a middle-aged stockbroker, “I majored in memes.”

David cracked up. Matteo, beaming, shrugged. “I guess your art’s gotten better, too. You know. If you’re into that kind of traditional format.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty behind on the times,” David said, smirking. 

“Don’t worry,” Matteo said. “You’re not behind. I’m just very, very far ahead.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

“David!” They turned in tandem at the call. Leonie smiled sweetly, and waved him over. David looked torn, glancing back and forth between her and Matteo. Mackenzie raised a manicured brow and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Do you wanna—” David started, indicating the fire, where there were no spots left besides the one carefully left for him to return to. He stopped, clearly not knowing what else to say.

It felt like like a balloon had been popped, and Matteo deflated along with it, suddenly not just nervous and uncomfortable, but miserable, and completely exhausted.

“Actually,” he said. “I think… I’m just gonna go home.”

“What?” David straightened, his arm reaching out, as if to touch Matteo, before falling to his side. “You just got here.”

“This just… really isn’t my scene, dude. But. Have fun, though.” _Without me_ , he thought.

“Matteo…”

But he was already walking away. Jonas caught his eye on his way out, but he read his face for no more than a few seconds before letting him pass by.

*

“Luigi!” Jonas shouted, after a sixth text had gone unanswered. “Get down here, or I _will_ start throwing rocks, and I _will_ break your window!”

Matteo groaned and grabbed his phone.

_im not coming_

_come ON dude. were not leaving til u get down here_

_i don’t want to go to the pool!!!_

_its hot!!!_

_its not that hot!!!!!_

_were waiting. rocks start flying in 30_

A moment later, Jonas added, _seconds. not minutes. 30 secs_

Matteo rolled his eyes but stood up, kicking off his shorts and boxers, digging through his drawers for swim shorts. When he’d dressed, he trudged downstairs, digging a beach towel out of the linen closet as his mom looked up from her lap top at the kitchen table. 

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi.”

“Oh! You’re going swimming?” She beamed at him. 

“Fully against my will,” Matteo grumbled, but he waved at her before heading out the front door. Jonas was balancing Matteo’s bike upright against his own, and he hooted and hollered along with Carlos and Abdi at the sight of Matteo giving in. 

“All right, Luigi! Joining the land of the living!”

“It’s been like half a day,” Matteo grumbled. 

“Half a day too long, my friend. We missed you. Didn’t we, boys?”

“Abdi was writing sonnets,” Carlos offered.

“Shakespeare wants what I have.” Abdi grinned. 

The pool was crowded when they got there, but Matteo noticed Amira immediately. She was hard to miss in her all-black, full-body wetsuit and swim cap. He walked over to her.

“Hey, study buddy.”

“Don’t you have to actually study to be a study buddy?” Amira looked up at him with a dull expression, but she cracked quick, grinning and slapping the pavement beside her. Matteo slid out of his sandals and sat next to her, putting his feet in the pool. The relief of the cold water was immense in the blistering summer heat, however much he would have denied it had Jonas asked. 

“Have you seen David yet?” Matteo asked, trying to sound indifferent to her reply. 

“’Course,” she said. “He slept over at Mia’s last night. I left around nine.” 

Matteo was surprised, though he never would have been in the past. Amira, David, and Mia had been close growing up; and when they all turned thirteen and heteronormative, trans-oblivious parenting rules dictated that David and Matteo couldn’t have sleepovers anymore, David had slept over at Mia’s countless times. 

So David had gone from Peach Place— from Leonie Richter and Mackenzie Hill— to Mia’s place, with Amira. Matteo kind of felt like he’d put his foot in his mouth, though he wasn’t quite sure how.

“Do you know where he is right now?”

“Probably running,” Amira said. “Or working out some other way, I guess.”

“He runs?” 

Amira nodded. “He does track. He’s like number one in the district or something.” 

Matteo wondered if track star fell under the umbrella of jock. He didn’t really know the rules about these things. He thought running suited David, though. He’d never much liked staying still.

“Luigi!”

Matteo stood, waving at Amira before rejoining his boys. Jonas handed him an otter pop the color of one of Sam’s braids, already opened for him. Matteo leveled Jonas with an accusatory gaze. Jonas shrugged. 

“I had to test it,” he said. “Make sure it wasn’t poison.”

“Finally you weenies got over yourselves,” Sam said, wading over to them in the water, dragging Hanna behind her in a sprinkled-donut floatie. She held a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. “Are you gonna stand there all day or are you gonna swim?”

“I love a challenge,” Jonas said, tossing his own otter pop at Matteo and immediately cannon-balling into the water, fully clothed. Sam and Hanna screamed as they were soaked by his enormous splash, and Carlos doubled over in laughter.

“Dude,” he said when Jonas came up, grinning wide, looking all together too pleased with himself. “Your phone.”

Jonas’s face fell, and he fished his phone out of his shorts, as all his friends laughed boisterously and mercilessly at his idiocy. Jonas shook his head, putting his soaked phone on the side of the pool and reaching up to Matteo for his otter pop. “Et tu, Brute?” he asked, and grabbed Matteo’s wrist, pulling him in. For once in his life, Matteo was grateful he’d left his phone at home.

*

Matteo pulled his bike short, looking away from the main road. “Um,” he called ahead, to his friends, who were already speeding away, not noticing his pause. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m gonna— sidetrack.” 

Jonas shrugged. “Later, dude.”

Matteo turned his wheel, getting off the road onto the dirt path that led to the trail through the woods, to the lake. He’d seen joggers take this path before, and he wondered…

His bike wobbled beneath him as the path got rougher; it wasn’t a mountain bike and it wasn’t really meant for any kind of serious terrain. Still, Matteo pushed on. Eventually the trees parted, the smaller end of the creek which fed into the lake coming into view. He looked around, almost expectantly, but there was no one nearby besides squirrels and bugs. He sighed and turned around; he’d only made his ride home longer, and he tried not to be annoyed with himself. 

He paused at the tree line to put his headphones in, turning Lil Nas X’s EP up to full volume as he turned back onto pavement. His mom always told him not to bike with music, but she wasn’t here, so whatever. 

His driveway came into view, and he tugged one earbud out in case his mom came out.

“Matteo!”

He nearly toppled his bike over at the sound of his name, and he was careful in coming to a stop, his heart still pounding in surprise as he turned to see who was calling him. 

It was David. He raised his hand in greeting, his expression seeming to communicate that he’d call Matteo’s name several times already.

He was dressed in jogging clothes and sneakers, and his hair was caked to his forehead with sweat. Matteo felt his eyes going big, and he swallowed and tried to compose himself.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” David pushed his wet hair back and stepped closer. “Listen, I— I wanted to apologize about yesterday. Those girls were being jerks to you, and I should have said something—”

“It’s fine,” Matteo said quickly, his face hot. 

“No, but— and then you saw me hanging out with them at Peach Place, you must have thought—” he sighed. “I just… I wanted…” He looked away. 

“It’s no big deal, David.”

David looked at him, his expression searching again, like yesterday, as if he’d lost his fluency in Matteo, and was trying to interpret him like some ancient language he had no familiarity with.

“You wanna come over?” Matteo asked, before he could stop himself.

David smiled. His shoulders fell, as if in a sudden release of tension. Then he looked down at himself, laughing and wrinkling his nose. “Let me shower first, but yeah. I’ll see you in twenty?”

Matteo nodded, and watched David walk away.

Matteo dashed upstairs when the front door slammed shut behind him, realizing he needed to shower, too. He sprinted into his room first, pulling his curtains shut, before sprinting to the bathroom.

“What is all the commotion about?” his mom yelled up the stairs.

“David’s coming over!”

His mom laughed. “Is that an occasion now?”

Matteo was just toweling off his hair, already dressed, when David knocked. “I got it!” he yelled. His mom laughed again, but he gave her a look, and she made herself scarce. 

Matteo opened the front door, and the position he was standing in, holding the door knob in one hand and the frame in the other, it almost looked like he was inviting David in for a hug. He blushed bright and went to drop his arms, but David stepped forward, wrapping his arms around him. “Hi,” he said.

Matteo smiled, laughed, and hugged him back. “Hi.”

David squeezed him, and Matteo grinned into his shoulder, but then David squeezed harder, until Matteo was spluttering, and David lifted him off his feet. Matteo shouted in protest, and David dropped him with a laugh; Matteo almost losing his balance before laughing, too, and shoving at David’s shoulder. “Idiot.”

“Not my fault you weigh like ten pounds.”

“Yeah, we get it, you’re a jock now, all right. Just get in here and help me make ice pops.”

David grinned, running ahead of Matteo to the kitchen, pulling the fridge open. “Strawberry lemonade,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Matteo with a smile. “Perfect.”

“You know I’m always prepared.”

David shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “It’s been a while since we made ice pops. Things might have changed.” He looked up at Matteo from under his lashes, and Matteo’s heart thudded hard, his stomach flipping like a burger on a grill. 

“No,” he said. “They haven’t.”

David ducked his chin, smiling, and opened the freezer, pulling out an ice tray. “OK,” he said. “Get the sticks.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

“That’s Sir Captain to you.”

Matteo shouldered him, biting his lip, trying not to smile. “Idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again a warning that updates probably won't always be this quick lfkhsdlgk anyway hope y'all enjoy


	4. Chapter 4

There were pink flowers growing through the chain-link fence behind the school. Matteo leaned in to smell them as he waited. They didn’t really smell like anything, but he darted quickly back, as a bee flew right up by his eye. 

David jogged over, a cone in each hand, and a wide grin on his face as ice cream already began to melt over his fingers. Matteo accepted his mint chocolate-chip, licking the side of the cone so it wouldn’t make a mess of his hand. 

David held his cone up to his mouth with one hand as he pulled his bike alongside him with the other. Matteo drifted next to him on his skateboard, prattling on without much thought or restraint about stuff David had missed while he’d been away. David darted grinning glances over at him as they went, and every time, Matteo’s heart kicked up a frantic beat, and his prattling picked up speed along with it, until he was talking so fast he could barely breathe.

Luckily, Jonas came to his rescue— as always.

“Luigi!” Jonas waved enthusiastically, as if they didn’t see each other nearly every day of their lives. Matteo waved back, anyway, kicking up his skateboard and tucking it under his arm as they stepped onto the grass.

Technically this was a church picnic, and earlier, it had been mostly church people out here. But around five, the old people and the families with kids started to trail off, until, eventually, it was just a few nervous community service volunteers standing behind the mostly-bare folding tables and a bunch of rowdy, hungry high schoolers swooping in for what was left.

Jonas handed Matteo a Coke and a corn dog. “Sorry, Schreibner, I didn’t know you were coming.”

“No problem,” David said, holding up his cone. “We’ve got dessert covered, at least.”

“I’ll get you something,” Matteo said, shoving the corndog back at Jonas and hurrying over to the food tables. 

He came back with a plate piled high with scraps, handing it to David with a flourish. David was smiling so wide his cheeks had to be hurting. 

Jonas handed him back the corndog. “OK,” he said. “Come on, we’re all parked over there.”

Hanna held a hand up for a high five as they approached, and Matteo sat on her other side as Sam leaned forward and made a face at him. “You guys remember David?” he asked.

“Of course,” Sam said. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” David said, balancing his plate carefully as he sat beside Matteo. 

“You look awesome, dude,” Carlos said, grinning at him. 

“Um, thanks.”

Jonas elbowed Carlos hard. “What?” Carlos looked around at them as Abdi rolled his eyes and Sam threw a grape at him.

“Where’s Laura?” Hanna asked.

David smiled and shrugged. “Probably with Mia.”

Sam leaned forward, her eyes wide and a popsicle in her mouth. She pulled it out with a pop. “Are they…?”

“Not yet,” David said, grinning. 

Matteo gaped at him. “Laura’s gay?”

David shrugged. “She likes girls. So far she likes ‘queer,’ but she hasn’t really figured out it yet.” He looked at Matteo, and Matteo felt frozen under his gaze, like a man looking at Medusa.

“I knew I liked her,” Sam said, grinning. Hanna laughed. 

The heat of the day was starting to fade, and a breeze passed over them as they ate, ruffling hair and knocking over an empty styrofoam cup. Abdi threw goldfish into Carlos’s mouth from growing distances, and Hanna fed Sam grapes like Cleopatra. 

“It’s cool,” David said, quietly enough that only Matteo could hear him.

“What?”

“Being here,” he said. He pulled out a clump of grass, sprinkling it over Matteo’s hair. “With you.”

Matteo shook out his head like a wet dog and smacked at David’s arm in protest as David laughed, but his chest felt constricted, like he imagined David used to feel in his binders. He chewed on his lower lip, watching David as he searched the grass for a four-leaf clover. His side profile, his jaw and his long lashes, dipping down slow, lazy, like a relaxed cat stretching its paw… Matteo couldn’t look away. Then David looked back, and he did. 

“I’m Dustin, I’m totally Dustin,” Jonas said. “Right, Luigi?”

“Totally,” Matteo said.

“He’s my Steve,” Jonas said, beaming.

“No way,” Sam said. “Matteo’s Will.”

“I’m Max,” Hanna said.

“Yeah you are, baby.”

“I don’t think you can really assign characters as easily as that with _Stranger Things_ ,” David said. “That’s one of the great things about the show. The writers and actors gave real depth to everyone, even the kids. It’s not like _Friends_ , or something, where everyone fits neatly into a series of tropes or an obvious archetype.”

They were quiet for a moment, before Jonas nodded in agreement. “You’re right, dude. I’m still Dustin, though.”

“You’re an idiot,” Matteo said. “And Dustin’s not an idiot.”

“Fine,” Jonas said. “Who am I in _Friends_?”

David laughed, shook his head, meeting Matteo’s gaze. They grinned at each other as argument broke out around them.

*

“Are you dead?” 

Matteo opened one eye, cracking a grin as he looked up at Amira in her floral-printed hijab. “I got tired.” He was sprawled out on his front lawn, next to his abandoned lawnmower.

“Someone could come along and _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ you like this, Matteo. You should really be more aware of the reality of suburban serial killers.”

“This isn’t suburbia,” Matteo said. “We’re too rural to be suburbia.”

“You’re missing the point.”

Matteo shrugged. “I could get out of the way in time.”

Amira rolled her eyes. “White people.” She held a hand out to him, pulling him up.

Matteo brushed grass off his clothes. He narrowed his eyes at the lawnmower. “How come we don’t have lawnmower Roombas?”

“Because, Elon Musk, that’s what Matteos are for. Are you coming tonight?”

“Coming where?”

“The drive-in. They’re playing _I Know What You Did Last Summer_.”

“So that’s what’s got murder on your mind.”

“That’s just my permanent state.” 

Matteo grinned. “I’ll be there.” 

He pulled out his phone when Amira walked away, texting the group chat. And David.

Jonas picked everyone up in his pickup truck and parked backwards in the drive-in, so they could lay out blankets and sardine themselves in bed of the truck. Matteo sat with Jonas on his left and David on his right. Carlos sat with Kiki in his lap on David’s other side. Amira, Mia, and Laura sat in the back of Mia’s Honda on the right of Jonas’s truck, and Abdi, Sam, and Hanna were sprawled on towels on the hood of Abdi’s grandpa’s old Camaro. 

The whole place smelled like over-buttered popcorn, gasoline, and weed. On PG nights, the weed smell was generally replaced by that back-of-a-minivan, crushed graham-cracker-and-goldfish stench. But horror and raunchy comedy nights always smelled like weed. Matteo grinned, accepting the none-too-hidden joint Jonas had lit. David shook his head when Matteo made to pass it to him.

“Sorry,” Matteo said, his neck heating up as he looked down.

“No, no, it’s cool,” David said. “It’s just a runner thing. I’m not supposed to smoke anything.”

“Oh, right,” Matteo grinned at him. “Amira told me you’re, like, the fastest guy in the state, right?”

David laughed. “Definitely not.”

“Fastest guy in the back of this truck, then.”

David smirked at that. “OK. Maybe.”

The sun finally finished setting, and the movie started the second the sky went dark. When the joint ran out, Matteo didn’t quite know what to do with his arms. He extended them out over his legs, but he looked stiff and awkward, besides _feeling_ stiff and awkward. He crossed them over his chest, but his elbow dug into David’s side. Jonas’s, too, but that didn’t matter— Jonas’s knee was already digging into Matteo’s thigh, anyway. 

Matteo drew his crossed arms in tight, like he was hugging himself. He tilted his head to whisper to David. “Freddie Prinze Junior and Sarah Michelle Gellar are married right?” 

“Yeah.”

“Do you think this is how they met?”

“This or the live action Scooby Doo.” 

Matteo laughed. “That’s right! They were Fred and daphne!” 

“Maybe they met filming this but they got together filming Scooby Doo.” 

“Yeah, everyone on set was teasing ‘em, saying how convincing their romantic chemistry was.”

David looked at him. “Until one day they cracked.”

“Can you two please be quiet?” They looked over at Kiki. She shot them a death glare.

Matteo grinned at David. David grinned back. On David’s other side, Carlos fake yawned and put his arm around Kiki, like that pretense was even necessary. Matteo looked away. 

Kiki overplayed every jump scare, burrowing further in Carlos every time. Matteo leaned in to whisper to David again, quieter this time.

“They’re already dating,” he said.

“What?” David whispered back.

“Kiki. The whole ‘hold me I’m scared’ thing. This movie isn’t even scary. And they’re already dating.”

David hummed, his gaze darting over to Kiki and Carlos and back to the screen.

Matteo furrowed his brow at the non-response, but figured David was just paying attention the movie. He sighed and tried to settle back more comfortably, sliding down a bit and loosening his arms. His elbow met with David’s hip, but there were like four layers of fabric between them, and their legs were already sandwiched next to each other. He told himself to chill out, and let the terrible writing suck him in.

He was just starting to get into it when the dead guy’s sister startled Sarah Michelle and Jennifer Love Hewitt in their car, and he nearly leaped out of his skin. He swore under his breath, his face flaming as he ducked his chin in toward himself, humiliated by his pathetic reaction. And right after he’d been making fun of Kiki, too.

Then he felt something. He froze, his pulse, which had been returning to a normal pace after the brief scare, rabbiting in his chest like a dog’s on the fourth of July. 

David had leaned into him. He tried to tell himself it was nothing; accidental; circumstantial. But David’s posture left little room for excuses. He was leaning his shoulder in toward where Matteo was slouched low, almost daring him to rest his head on it. _Comforting_ him. Like Carlos, with Kiki.

Matteo swallowed and tried to breathe through his nose, his pulse still jackhammering as he hesitated. Then it seemed he’d hesitated too long, and David shuffled, just slightly, and started to lean away.

Matteo inched up and flopped his head onto David’s shoulder like he was dropping a heavy grocery bag onto a kitchen counter. He couldn’t be sure— the movie was loud and there was laughter coming from the girls in the Honda— but he thought he heard David catch his breath.

“Well,” Jonas said, when the credits began to roll. “That was crap.” He looked over at Matteo for concurrence. 

“Yeah,” Matteo said, sitting up fast and straight. “Crap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter is shorter than usual, it just felt like a good ending point to me  
> also sorry this took longer than the last updates but i DID warn u that would happen lkfhkdgh


	5. Chapter 5

Matteo kicked up gravel, cringing as he felt a bead of sweat drip all the way down his back, and under the waistband of his shorts. 

“It’s too hot,” he said.

“Man, you’re telling me,” Jonas said, wiping his brow and pushing his shades up into his hair. “Pool day?”

Matteo shook his head. “I can’t deal with people right now.”

“Maybe you could deal with them better if you were cooled off. By the pool.”

Matteo rolled his eyes. “No.” 

The food mart doors chimed behind a cheerful Abdi and a distracted Carlos, who was staring down at his phone. 

“Got ‘em, boys!”

They crossed the safe distance of the street and showed off their wares: a six pack and a pack of red vines.

“You think they actually don’t notice us waiting out here, or they just don’t care?”

“I had Pre-Calc with the cashier,” Carlos said, looking up from his phone. “So I’m gonna go with the second one.”

“Is there AC in there?” Matteo asked, staring wistfully into the store.

“Of course.”

He sighed. “I never thought I’d be envious of a gas station cashier.”

Jonas put his arm around Matteo’s shoulders. “No worries, bro. I know where we can go.”

When the automatic doors of the mall slid closed behind them, Matteo took in a huge gulp of cold air and beamed at Jonas. “Genius.”

Carlos groaned. “I hope we don’t run into Kiki. She’s mad at me again.”

“What’d you do?”

“I think it’s something I didn’t do.”

“Buy her something, dude,” Jonas said, grinning. “Nothing buys forgiveness like cold hard cash.”

Matteo hung behind the group as they debated what stores were the best for apology-presents, looking down at his phone. He tugged down on his messages, but nothing new came in. He stared at his last text from David.

_cant today, helping laura set up her new drum kit_

He chewed on his lip, contemplating, before letting his fingers fly across the keyboard. 

_at the mall. kiosks looking fire today. thinking about getting a new phone case_

David’s reply was almost immediate, and Matteo grinned down at the typing bubble.

_ooh, describe the contenders_

_well there’s one thats shaped like a hand. so when u hold it up to ur ear it looks like u have 2 hands_

_SOLID first option. but who rly talks on the phone anymore?_

_fair point._ Matteo glanced up briefly, almost walking into a pack of middle school girls. _maybe i should go for the pom pom one?_

_like it has mini pom poms attached?_

_no its a full sized pom pom. says here it was upcycled after a cheerleader quit the team due to a tragic football-to-the-face incident_

_oh wow! i assume the profits go to her medical fund?_

_no but .05% of profits go to cancer research_

_i think we have a winner_

“Dude, Luigi,” Jonas said, laughing and wrapping an arm around Matteo’s shoulders. “You almost took out an eight-year old just now.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“You gonna join us in capitalism’s land of milk and honey, or should we leave you and Steve Jobs alone?”

Matteo looked up from his phone, his face hot. “Sorry.”

“’s’at David?”

Matteo nodded.

“He coming tonight?”

Matteo wrinkled his nose. “Coming where?”

Jonas side-stepped a child in a Spiderman costume sprinting at full-speed, and laughed as he watched him go. “Peach Place.”

Matteo sighed. “Again?”

“Come on, Luigi, it’ll be great.”

Matteo took a wide path around a kiosk worker holding out samples and loudly backhanded-complimenting his hair. “Fine. Whatever.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Guys,” Carlos stood in the entrance of Hot Topic, holding up a _Beauty & the Beast_ keychain. “Does this say ‘I have no idea what I did, but I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again?’” 

“Loud and clear, my man,” Jonas clapped Carlos on the back, grinning wide. 

Matteo shook his head. “You people are so weird.”

“Straight people?”

“Yeah.”

“You got that right, man.”

 _“Guys,”_ Abdi yelled from a distance Matteo hadn’t realized he’d gone. _“Dippin’ Dots!”_

Jonas hollered and ran toward Abdi, and the holy grail of ice cream stands. Carlos looked sadly down at the keychain in his hand.

“Go buy your apology,” Matteo said, laughing. “Dippin’ Dots will be there when you’re done.”

*

It was still fully light out when Matteo arrived at Peach Place this time, and he didn’t have to look around for David, who’d biked over next to him. 

Jonas grinned and waved when he spotted them, turning to whisper something to Carly Webb before jogging over.

“How’s it hangin’, loverboys?”

 _“Jonas,”_ Matteo growled. “Shut _up_ , dude, we’re just friends.”

Jonas laughed and sucker-punched Matteo’s arm. “I know, man, I’m just jerking your chain. Chill. Can I get y’all beers?”

Matteo nodded. He looked over at David, who was standing stiffly, his mouth set in a hard line. “They got anything harder?”

“My man! For sure. Wait here, I’ll hook you up.”

Jonas jogged away, and Matteo turned more fully toward David. “I kind of hate it here.”

David gave him a tight-lipped smile, his eyes distant, before seeming to come back to himself, and turning toward Matteo. “Why? Don’t like peaches?”

“The peach smell is the saving grace, actually,” Matteo said. He shrugged. “I guess it’s just the people.”

“What’s wrong with the people?”

Matteo scoffed a laugh. “You witnessed the Mackenzie thing.”

“Oh,” David said, frowning. “Right.”

“Everyone who hangs out here acts like that with me,” Matteo said. He shrugged again. “It’s not a big deal. I just prefer to avoid it, usually.”

“Why are we here, then?”

Matteo made a conscious effort not to shrug again, scuffing his shoe in the dirt as a group of girls shoved two lacrosse guys away from the speakers, and a One Direction song promptly started playing at full blast. It was a good thing this place didn’t have neighbors.

“I dunno. Jonas likes coming here. And… you came here the other day.”

David’s face softened, and he shouldered Matteo lightly. “I’m down for whatever, Matteo. I’d be just as happy hanging out at your place and watching vine compilations, or whatever.”

Matteo’s stomach swooped, and he grinned at the ground. Then, of course, a wave of regret came over him, that they were _here_ instead of doing just that.

Jonas appeared in front of them again, handing them their respective drinks and taking a long pull from his own. “Oh,” he said belatedly, tapping his bottle against Matteo’s and David’s cup. “Cheers.”

They all took a drink, and Matteo scanned the crowd, tapping out a fast rhythm on his thigh, out of sync with the music. Amir Pattel stepped on a rotten peach and made a disgusted face, plopping down on an abandoned tire examine his shoe. Lauren, whose last name Matteo couldn’t remember, was making a S’more, her hair dangling dangerously low over the fire. Leonie and Sara were sitting next to the keg, taking selfies. 

Matteo felt like a water bottle in a mountain stream, bobbing along, visibly out of place. Sometimes he wondered if there was a class he’d never taken, that taught people how to _be_. How to be teenagers, how to be cool, how to be normal. Even if he’d taken it, he probably would have failed.

“Should we—?” Jonas had wandered off already, and David gestured to a low, fat stump— an oak that had been cut down when it cracked in a summer storm. Matteo nodded, and they walked over and sat down. David grinned and turned, so they were sitting back to back. Matteo laughed.

“All clear on this end,” David said, lowering his voice. “How is it over there?”

“The area appears secure.” Matteo smiled, leaning down on his hand. David turned, nudging Matteo with his shoulder again. They were silent for a minute, drinking and observing.

Matteo watched Heather Hill and Des Gould where they sat by the fire. She was sitting side-saddle across his lap, her hands in his hair, and they were sucking face so hard you’d think they were aliens or demons of some kind, trying to steal each other’s life force.

“What’s it _like?”_ he heard himself ask.

“What’s what like?”

Matteo shrugged— he really hadn’t meant to say that aloud. “Just… being straight. In high school.” He sighed and slumped down over his legs. “I know it, like, gets better, or whatever. And obviously it could be worse for me. I haven’t gotten that much crap.”

“What crap have you gotten?” David asked, sounding defensive. 

Matteo shrugged again, brushing it off. “Doesn’ matter. I just can’t imagine _dating_ right now, you know? Like,” he gestured toward Heather and Des. “What is that _like?”_ He laughed. “Not that I’d even have anyone _to_ date, even if people were like… unaware of the concept of homophobia.”

David was quiet for a long time. Finally, he turned away from Matteo again. “Sam and Hanna are dating,” he said.

“That’s true.” Matteo laughed bitterly. “Maybe it’s just me.”

“It’s not you, Matteo.”

Matteo turned. “Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s not easy for you, either. Obviously it’s not just being gay in high school that sucks.”

“Florenzi!” Matteo turned at the sound of his name. Tony Rodriguez, a social line-walker who skated, had a lot of money, and got a lot of detentions, waved Matteo over. He was a nice enough guy, so Matteo waved back. 

“I’m gonna—” 

“Sure,” David said, taking another drink and looking around. 

“I’ll be right back.”

Tony talked Matteo’s ear off about the upcoming X games, while Matteo nodded along, chiming in very little but content enough to smile at Tony’s enthusiasm and seemingly total unawareness of Matteo’s social-nobody status. He was spacing out a little when Tony quirked a brow, looking over Matteo’s shoulder. “Check it out,” he said. “Alums.”

Matteo turned to see who he meant. Hans Brecht and Linn Shira were standing by the keg, being warmly greeted by Mackenzie and Heather, who had spent most of sophomore year trying to get Hans to be their Gay Best Friend. Hans was the only other gay guy Matteo knew in person, and though they’d only ever been acquaintances, especially since Matteo hadn’t come out until after Hans had already graduated, he smiled at the sight of him. Suddenly the whole place felt a little bit lighter; safer. David had made Peach Place somewhere Matteo would even think about being, and Hans made it even a little bit friendly, like a mom and pop place where everyone is nice to you, even if you would probably prefer that they just ignore you.

“It’s cool of them to come here,” Tony said. 

Matteo looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

Tony shrugged. “A lot of college kids come home and act like they’d rather lose a limb than be seen with us _high schoolers_.”

“I guess.”

“Oh,” Tony quirked a brow, looking over Matteo’s shoulder again. “Well. Maybe their motives are… less than pure.”

Matteo turned, confused at Tony’s words, and tone. 

Linn looked more uncomfortable than Matteo, even at his worst. But Hans was laughing. And next to him, head tilted flirtatiously, smiling, with his hand on Hans’s arm, was David.

“What?” 

“Tough luck for Leonie and Mackenzie,” Tony said, laughing, nodding over towards the girls, who were gaping in David’s direction, wearing twin expressions of distress. “I can’t blame them, though. I thought that guy was straight, too.” Matteo looked back at Tony, who quirked a brow. “I guess you knew, though, huh?”

Matteo looked at David, and then at Jonas, who was giving him bug eyes, and mouthed _WTF?_

“Um,” Matteo said. “No.”

*

Leonie had backed off since the Peach Place incident, but Mackenzie had only redirected her energy, still angling hard for David’s attention. 

“Come in the _water!”_ She yelled, beaming at David from her floatie. 

“No, thanks,” David said. He turned around, walking backward and stopping by a couple of lounge chairs. “This good?” he asked Matteo.

Matteo nodded. They laid out their towels, and Matteo tugged off his shirt, taking a deep breath while his head was hidden inside of it, trying to compose himself.

He hadn’t said anything about the Hans thing, and neither had David. Maybe David didn’t even know Matteo had seen. But pretty much everyone was talking about it— about the fact that Mysterious Summer Stranger was apparently gay. Or, from Matteo’s perspective; because he knew David had liked girls in the past; into guys.

Maybe he wasn’t, though. Maybe it hadn’t been anything. Maybe they’d just been talking. David had been drinking vodka, and he was kind of a lightweight. Maybe it was just that. Or maybe Hans had started it, and David had played along, jokingly, or whatever.

Matteo’s head was a mess. He felt like someone had thrown a rager in their and left it trashed the morning after. 

He stood, wiping sunscreen over his arms and chest. He pulled out the kind that looked like a glue stick and rolled it over his face, applying liberally to his nose, which always got the worst of it.

David was looking at him. Matteo tried not to look back, but, unsurprisingly, only lasted about thirty seconds.

“Want me to do your back?” David asked. 

Matteo felt like he’d swallowed a pile of rocks. “Um,” he said, and somehow the single syllable wavered. “Sure. Thanks.” 

David nodded and grabbed the bottle, and Matteo turned on his chair to give David better access. 

He was slouching a little, but he straightened up like he’d been stabbed in the spine when David’s hands met his skin. His eyelids dropped of their own volition; David’s hands massaged the sunscreen in gently, moving in little loops. Even covered in slippery slime, the pads of David’s fingers and the brunt of his palms were electric on Matteo’s back, like he was scalding him where he was meant to be saving him from getting burnt. Matteo shuddered, despite himself, and David’s hands finally pulled away.

“There ya go,” he said, kind of belatedly, and his voice sounded like he’d been shouting.

“Thanks,” Matteo managed, and though he knew it would defeat the purpose of putting sunscreen on at all, he immediately stepped forward and dove into the pool.

The cold water was a rush of relief from the heat which had flooded his whole body, and he stayed down there for as long as he could manage, trying not to think, trying _not_ to _over_ think. It’s just sunscreen, he told himself. He came up, took a huge breath of air, met David’s eyes, already on him. It’s _just_ sunscreen.

David slipped out of his sandals and sat down on the edge of the water, still wearing his blue button down, printed with tan palm trees. 

Mackenzie floated closer and beamed at David. “Coming in, now?”

“I’m allergic to chlorine,” he said, sparing her a brief glance before looking back at Matteo.

“But your feet are in the water.”

“Yeah— yeah, I know, it’s, it’s a, uh, exposure thing— like, too much time or too much of my body is exposed to chlorine and I— uh— have an… allergic reaction.” He pulled his legs out of the water and stood up. “Yeah, so, I should— I’m just gonna—” He gestured to the pool chairs, and walked away, laying out on his stomach.

Mackenzie looked at Matteo, quirking a brow in question. Matteo just shrugged, staring at David’s calves, and dipped himself underwater again, like he was coating an ice cream cone in fudge. It was easier to breathe down there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the shirt David's wearing at the pool is one i have irl and THAT'S wlw/mlm solidarity folks


	6. Chapter 6

“Are we sure this place isn’t, like, full of asbestos?”

“It’s a stone building, Carlos. You need to chill out.”

“Can stone not get asbestos?”

“I don’t actually know anything about asbestos. Is it like termites?”

“Termites are a _bug_.”

“I know _that_. I meant is it, like, limited to wood?”

“You guys are morons,” Sam said, and jumped the wall. 

The crumbling white building was overgrown with plant life, like a greenhouse which had gone rogue. Matteo followed David over the wall and promptly stepped on broken glass, jumping back and checking to make sure it hadn’t gone through his shoe.

“Careful,” Jonas said belatedly, “glass.”

“Thanks, dude.”

Jonas grinned and pushed forward as Sam lifted Hanna into a wide empty window. Hanna smiled down at her, like a painting brought to life, and Sam stared at her like a biblical shepherd struck dumb at the sight of an angel.

David brushed past Matteo, the backs of their hands touching, and Matteo shivered, letting his eyes close briefly. David leaned down and rifled through the growth, picking something up. 

“What’s ‘at?”

David stood and held his palm out for Matteo to examine his find. It was a broken tile, painted with the tip of a wing. Matteo smiled at him, and David pocketed the tile and turned. 

“I feel like I’m in a Jane Austen book,” Carlos said, staring up at the circular skylight, open to the blue sky like the Pantheon. 

“You’re so corny, dude.”

“What? It’s old time-y, don’t you think?”

“Don’t make fun,” Hanna said. “Nothing wrong with a guy with a taste for period films.”

“I don’t watch the movies,” Carlos grumbled. Abdi barked a laugh. “Whatever, man. She’s a wizard of words, OK?”

“A what?” Abdi bent over laughing.

“I love _Northanger Abbey_ ,” David said, running his hand over a dusty ledge. “A lot of people only think of her as a romance writer, but her social commentary and comedic skill were just as important to her novels as the romantic elements, in my opinion.”

“I don’t know that one,” Abdi said, staring at David with wide eyes.

”It’s a brilliant satire of the gothic romances which were being written at the time— which are really more akin to the modern romance novels which people liken her novels to, nowadays.”

“I like you, dude,” Jonas said, socking David in the shoulder as Carlos gaped at him.

David laughed. “Thanks?”

Matteo grinned at the ground, his stomach doing a twisty-wriggly thing like a baby trying to wiggle off a changing table. When he looked up, Jonas was looking over at him. He quirked a brow, and Matteo looked quickly away, but not quick enough to miss Jonas’s cheeky smirk. 

Sam had helped Hanna down, and she pulled on her hand as she pushed to the front of their group. “Do these stairs look stable to you guys?”

“Absolutely not.”

She ran up.

“Sam!” Hanna yelled, but she was laughing. 

“Those stairs definitely have asbestos,” Abdi said.

Sam appeared at a balcony. “You guys look like ants down there!” 

“You’re a single floor higher than us,” Carlos said. 

“Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me, Carlos.”

“Yeah, Carlos,” Hanna grinned over her shoulder. Carlos sighed dramatically. 

Matteo noticed a doorway, and stepped away from the group to explore. It led into a tiny space, like a closet of some kind, and just as he turned to leave, David stepped in, asking, “What’d you find?” 

He stopped, and Matteo stopped, and Matteo stopped breathing, as they stood there, nearly chest to chest, staring at each other in the semi-dark of the small space, out of the view of their friends. David’s gaze fell— to Matteo’s mouth?— and his lips parted, a breath like a soda can being opened escaping. 

Then Jonas bumped hard into David from behind, slamming him into Matteo. 

“Oh, lame,” Jonas said, looking around the closet. Then he looked at Matteo, winked, and stepped back, turning and hurrying away. 

Matteo’s hands were on David’s arms, and David’s chin was latched over Matteo’s shoulder, and Matteo was breathing so fast he worried he might actually hyperventilate. 

David backed up, avoiding Matteo’s eyes, and bit his lip. He opened his mouth, like he was going to say something, and then turned, and walked away.

“It says 99 billion served,” Abdi was saying when Matteo stepped out of the room. “But there are only seven billion people on earth. So it’s more like seven billion people served, like, lots of times.”

“It’s been around since the 40s though,” Jonas said. “So it’s served people who aren’t alive anymore. Could be more than seven billion that way.”

Abdi paused to think about that. “OK, sure, but still not 99 billion people. There haven’t been 99 billion people alive since the 40s.”

“Yeah, probably not.” 

“What are we talking about?” Matteo asked.

“McDonald’s.”

David grinned over his shoulder. “What else?”

*

David and Matteo slid into the booth first as Mia and Laura talked to Amira over the counter. The diner was packed with the lunch crowd, although there were probably just as many people there for the AC as for their mid-day meal. A group of middle schoolers stood with milkshakes in front of the wide pastel stripes on the walls, taking pictures of each other. One of them almost tripped a busboy.

“I’m thinking breakfast food,” David said.

“I’m always thinking breakfast food.”

David nodded sagely. “The question is, pancakes or a waffle?”

Matteo held his hand to his chin in an exaggerated pondering gesture. “You can get chocolate chips in your pancakes.”

“True. But you can also get ice cream on your waffle.”

“Want to get both and split?”

David grinned. “Deal.”

Mia and Laura walked over and sat down, Laura vibrating a nervous energy as she scooted far into the booth, against the partition, before trying to subtly inch over, closer to Mia. Mia smiled amusedly down at her menu.

“We’re going with breakfast food,” David said.

“Hm. I’m thinking tuna melt,” Laura said, without even opening her menu.

Mia pursed her lips, flipping through the pages. “I think… veggie wrap.”

“Great choice,” Laura said, beaming at her. David raised a brow at her, and Mia coughed a laugh into her fist.

Amira came over to them, poking Matteo in the shoulder. “What’s up, losers?”

“I like your hijab,” David said, smiling at her.

She smiled back, touching said hijab, which was printed with sunset-colored butterflies; and yellow flower petals which matched her uniform. “Thanks. I got it online.” She looked at Mia, holding a hand up to ward off protest. “ _Not_ on Amazon.” Mia grinned.

“What time do you get off?” Matteo asked, nearly poking himself in the nostril with his straw. David laughed at him.

“Two.”

“You should come hang out after.”

“Maybe,” she said, smirking. “If I can’t find anything better to do.” 

Matteo threw a napkin at her, and she laughed and tapped her pad on the table. “OK, give me your orders, or my boss will tell me off for loitering.”

When she’d gone, Laura turned almost completely in her seat to zero in on Mia, who accepted the situation easily enough, smiling as she watched Laura ramble.

“Should we check the jukebox?” David asked. 

Matteo nodded. “Sure, why not?”

They collected quarters from their table mates and their own wallets before scurrying over to the jukebox, flipping the metal page-turners; searching the list thoroughly. David insisted on putting on “Summertime” by Ella Fitzgerald, and Matteo followed it up with a few plays of “What’s New Pussycat?”, because, duh.

“You’re so predictable,” David said, but he was looking at Matteo with this soft, affectionate expression that made Matteo’s palms go slick with sweat. 

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So are you.”

“Maybe we just know each other really well,” David said— there was a question in his voice, and Matteo wasn’t quite sure what it was. He swallowed, and chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“Maybe so.” 

Their food arrived fast, considering the crowd, and Matteo and David ate off each other’s plates as much as their own, laughing and knocking elbows until their forearms were basically covered in syrup.

“I feel like I’ve been fisting a maple tree,” Matteo said. 

David doubled over laughing as Mia made a gagging sound and Laura hid her face behind her hands. “You’re disgusting, Florenzi.”

“Thanks, I try.”

Across from them, a mom spoke in an increasingly-stricter and louder voice as her child leaned further and further into a booth that wasn’t his own. The middle schoolers had sat in the diner’s biggest booth, in the far right corner, and they seemed to be considering snorting sugar packets through plastic straws. A little girl in a paper sailor’s hat got a gum ball from the machine near the door, and promptly threw it at her brother.

“What’s New Pussycat” came on. Amira, several tables over, immediately swiveled in their direction, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping. 

“You did _not_ ,” she said, looking directly at Matteo, who burst out laughing. The middle schoolers cracked up, too, cheering and abandoning their sugar-snorting venture to pull out their phones and film. 

Amira shot Matteo dagger eyes before turning and smiling angelically at the table she was waiting.

“You are an agent of chaos,” David said.

“Thank you,” Matteo said again, “I try.”

*

The sun had set, and everyone who hadn’t left had stopped riding, sitting instead at the top of the half pipe, passing a joint between them. A single street light cast a bit of illumination onto the pavement beside them, and the moon and stars were bright enough that it wouldn’t have been pitch black, anyway. Still, skating in the dark wasn’t worth the risk. Matteo had tried it, before— it was like every instinct he had, the connection he felt with his board, like it was one with his feet and his legs, attached and in tune with his movements, vanished in the dark. He became a total novice, like the first time her ever stepped onto a board, and landed with his face in the dirt and his hands embedded deeply with gravel.

Even in the dark, Matteo could feel Jonas’s eyes on the side of his face; but he looked straight on, refusing to acknowledge his best friend, or his prying words.

“Luigi…” he started again.

“ _Dude_ , enough.”

“Fine,” Jonas said, sighing. He waited a beat, tapping his hands on the wood of the halfpipe. “We’re still going camping next weekend, right?”

Matteo had forgotten, but he nodded smoothly. “Yeah, ’course.”

“You should invite him,” Jonas said. 

Matteo wanted to gripe at Jonas for refusing to drop it, but it wasn’t a bad idea, actually. If he’d remembered their camping trip, he would have invited David already.

“Yeah, maybe.”

The crickets in the trees at the edge of the skatepark were loud in the quiet of the summer evening, and a gust of wind passed over them, fluttering Matteo’s shirt and bringing goosebumps up on his arms. He wanted to text David, maybe go to his house after this, and hang out with him and Laura; watch bad movies and eat popcorn drizzled with melted Hershey’s bars. But sitting next to Jonas, now, with the heaviness of his prodding questions, and unsolicited opinions, Matteo felt paralyzed, like one of the trees he was looking out over, rooted to the spot. 

When they were kids, Matteo and David used to lay in their yards and pretend they were fallen trees, still alive but no longer tall; outcast from the forest and no longer deemed acceptable homes for birds and squirrels. They would hold hands and stare up at the sky, peaceful, though fallen, because they had each other.

“If those two don’t end up together, I’ll eat my hat,” Matteo’s mom had said. David had hated that. It made sense to Matteo why, later. Their parents assigned Matteo the role of groom, and David, bride— and that wasn’t right. But then they got older, and Matteo revealed, to himself and others, that he’d never have a bride, anyway. And maybe then, without Matteo realizing, a door that’d always been closed had drifted slightly open, letting out a possibility.

Matteo rode his bike home beside Jonas, as Jonas whistled a Childish Gambino song Matteo couldn’t remember the name of. 

“We should get some of that astronaut ice cream,” Jonas said. “For camping.”

“What? Why?”

“I dunno, I saw it at a camping supplies store once.”

Matteo shrugged. “As long as we have bug spray, I’m good.”

Jonas laughed. “I forgot. You’ve got that extra-sweet blood, huh?”

“Don’t be weird about it, weirdo.”

Jonas peeled off toward his driveway. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you.”

“Matteo,” Jonas said, just as Matteo pulled up into his own driveway, and came to a stop. He looked over at his shoulder. 

“He’d be crazy if he didn’t,” Jonas said. He turned, without further explanation, and wheeled his bike into his open garage, closing the door behind him.

Matteo stared after him, paralyzed again, an itch under his skin as he thought about fallen trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the abandoned building scene is due entirely to [this mood board](http://amabilis-lorelei.tumblr.com/post/186358145187/for-shesarealphony-s-fic-blister-in-the) by amabilis-lorelei so THANK YOU for that :')
> 
> also the McDonald's conversation may or may not have been a real conversation i had out loud with myself bc my mother did not respond in any way shape or form; i can neither confirm nor deny


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SEASON FOUR THOUGH!!!!!!!!! IT'S LOVING AMIRA HOURS

“You got it?”

“I— OK, just— can you stand _still_? I have to—”

“You’re not that light, I can’t keep doing this—”

“Just _stop moving!”_ Amira grabbed on to the branch and wrenched the peach free in an aggressive twisting motion as Essam swayed beneath her. She held it up in victory. “OK, put me down.”

David laughed. “The low-hanging peaches are just as good, you know.”

“The lower they’re hanging the riper they are,” Amira said smartly. “And I need this to save.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” Matteo said, grinning as he tossed another peach into the bucket he was sharing with David. 

“Shut up,” Amira said, shoving Essam when she’d brushed herself off. 

“What’d I do!” Essam complained.

“The ripe ones are better for us,” David said. “Matteo’s gonna make me a cobbler.”

“Ooh, what a sweet little wife you are, Matteo,” Essam said, grinning cheek to cheek. Amira shoved him again. “What now!”

“Don’t be sexist. And homophobic.”

“This sucks,” Essam said. “I don’t know why I agreed to this.”

Matteo and David smiled at each other covertly. Siblings.

It was early, earlier than Matteo usually got up of his own volition, but that meant it wasn’t hot yet. The orchard was comfortable in the morning air, and the grass beneath them was decorated with dew, as well as rotting peaches. If someone made a perfume and called it “summer,” it would probably smell like this place, and the advertisements would look like it— its bright green leaves; its pink and orange fruit. The kinds of colors babies wear, and the smell certain girls always have about them; the kind of girls who always seem to be smiling.

Matteo liked looking at David, here. He looked ethereal; like a Van Gogh painting; or like he was a Wes Anderson character about to say something very pithy and rude. 

“You didn’t agree to anything,” Amira was saying as she shoved Essam forward, pointing to another high peach for him to reach— this time on his own. “You _lost_ a bet.”

“Whatever. On a technicality.”

“As if!”

David found a peach blossom; leftover from spring, and plucked it as the Mahmood siblings argued on. He tucked it behind Matteo’s ear. “To paint the lily,” he said. He bit his lip. “To throw a perfume on the violet.”

“What is that?” Matteo asked— not realizing he was whispering ’til it was already done.

“Shakespeare.” David cleared his throat. He turned half away, plucked a soft peach, and took a bite like a muffle; like a sock in his mouth, under duct tape. His lips; the divets on either side of them; his chin dripped with juice, and Matteo felt his knees weaken, literally wobble— he’d never realized that really happened, that knees really did that. He wanted to say, “I need to sit down,” but they were outside.

David wiped his chin, careless to the havoc he was wreaking on his best friend; who hadn’t realized, only days ago, that he wanted _his_ best friend like this. But he did. David took another bite from the peach, and Matteo felt it in his chest, like it was his heart being chewed and swallowed. He _did_.

“Stealing is haram, you know,” Essam said.

“This isn’t stealing. They’re trees. It’s nature. It belongs to all of us.”

“It’s a farm. They belong to the farmers.”

“It’s not like they’ll miss a few peaches. If we didn’t pick these they’d just fall and rot, anyway.”

“Not the ones on the top.”

“Shut _up_ , Essam.”

A ladybug landed on Amira’s shoulder. David commanded her to freeze and pulled out his phone, instructing her to turn her head to look at the little bug as he took her picture. Amira grinned at him when he showed her the photo. 

“This is why it’s good to have artist friends,” she said.

Essam, who was halfway up a peach tree, half-dangling with his leg hooked over a dangerously thin branch, yelled at an unnecessarily loud volume. “Schreibner! Get _my_ picture!”

Amira sighed exaggeratedly, but David laughed and followed Essam’s order. He stood between Amira and Matteo, flipping back and forth between the two photos. “The duality of Mahmood,” he said.

“He was switched at birth,” Amira said frankly.

“Yeah, I’m Superman.”

“You’re a changeling.”

Matteo and David grinned at each other again.

“Don’t tell people that,” Essam said, jumping down from the tree, somehow, amazingly, avoiding any broken bones. “That’s a secret.”

*

“What’s the difference between a cobbler and a pie?” David asked, pulling himself onto Matteo’s kitchen counter.

“That question is insulting, and I refuse to deign it with a response.”

“Oh, pardon _me_ ,” David said, chuckling as he grabbed a wooden spoon and tapped out a rhythm on his thigh. “I’ll leave the cooking to the cook, I guess.”

“This is baking, but, yeah.”

David laughed. “As long as it has that crumbly stuff on top, I’m good.”

“Of course it will. What do you think I am, an amateur?” Matteo scoffed. “This isn’t _Nailed It!_ Respect me or get out of my kitchen.”

David hid his smile in the brunt of his palm, leaning forward on his knees. “Can I provide music, at least?”

Matteo considered as he buttered the pan. “Kitchen DJ. OK. I’ll allow it.”

“Thank you for your graciousness, your majesty.”

Matteo used his spatula to bow. David put on Kevin Abstract and leaned his head back against the cabinets. Matteo could feel his eyes on the side of his face as he mixed, and his stomach churned like he’d downed whole one of the raw eggs he was cracking into the mixing bowl. He kept having to re-measure his ingredients, and he wanted to tell David to stop distracting him, but didn’t want to give himself away.

Matteo let out a breath of relief when the pan was in the oven. He turned. “What should we do while we wait? Pool?”

“Won’t that take too long?” 

Matteo shrugged. “Mom’s home. I’ll just tell her to take it out in an hour.”

David nodded, and Matteo dashed off.

They rode their bikes to the pool; it was properly hot now, and after standing in the kitchen with the pre-heating oven, Matteo was glad they were heading toward water in which he could submerge himself. They locked up their bikes and unlatched the gate. Kiki and Carlos were there, and waved them over. There weren’t enough pool chairs for all of them, but Matteo hadn’t come to sit beside the pool, anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

He waited maybe five minutes after putting on sunscreen to jump in. David laughed at him and Kiki and Carlos joined soon after, cannon-balling with held hands. In the water, Carlos lifted Kiki up on his shoulders.

“You coming in?” Kiki asked David, shaking with laughter as Carlos tried to keep his balance.

David looked around and shrugged. “Maybe in a minute.”

“I thought you were hot,” Matteo said, hanging off the side of the pool.

“It’s better here,” David said, his eyes shifty as he crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s some shade.”

David wasn’t anywhere near shade, and Matteo quirked a brow at him. Matteo had thought he wouldn’t be able to get David _out_ of the pool this summer; now that he’d had top surgery. He’d always hated it here before, but it’d been one of the things he’d told Matteo he was most looking forward to, when he was recovering over winter break.

Matteo let Kiki and Carlos distract themselves and pulled himself out of the water, sitting on the chair beside David and giving him a questioning look. 

David avoided his gaze, still, watching a kid sprinting on the opposite side of the pool, before promptly being whistled at by the lanky, zinc-striped lifeguard. A beach ball flew across the water, and Kiki caught it, tossing it back to a garage band-looking guy with a faux-hawk.

“I keep telling myself to do just do it,” David said. It was an abrupt sentence, almost like he’d been having a conversation in his head, and was letting Matteo in halfway-through. Matteo looked at him. “Just _get in the water_ , you know? But I’m… just…” he sighed, running his hands over his face. “I dunno.”

Matteo stayed quiet, watching David, waiting.

“It’s stupid, I know. I got _surgery_ and I’m wasting my summer hiding out and avoiding anyone seeing my chest, just like every other summer.” 

Matteo didn’t want to agree, not when David was clearly being hard on himself, but he really didn’t understand, either. 

“It’s not stupid,” he said.

David sighed. “I wasn’t planning on being stealth, obviously. I was ready to enjoy this summer, you know? But I got here and people didn’t recognize me. They didn’t know. And if they saw my chest they’d find out. They’d ask questions. Part of why I _did_ this was to move past all that, you know?”

Matteo nodded slowly. “No, yeah,” he said. “That makes sense.” Just then, Kiki and Carlos lost their balance, collapsing backwards so Kiki splashed into the water. They came up spluttering and laughing, and Matteo grinned. “I have an idea.”

*

When they’d eaten enough cobbler to feel sick, David and Matteo sprawled out on Matteo’s couch, poking each other with their feet as they binged the new season of Dark, which David had already watched, but wanted Matteo to see. Matteo asked endless questions, each of which earned him a kick and a _“watch”_ from David.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Matteo’s mom said around ten, and she headed up to her bedroom.

Matteo and David met eyes and grinned, rushing to turn off the TV and hurry upstairs to change.

They closed the front door quietly behind them and biked in silence, the evening wind beating against them as they went. 

Matteo regretted his plan immensely as David landed safely and smoothly on the other side of the fence with a casual jump. He took a deep breath and climbed up the chain-link with sweaty hands, perching carefully on top, swinging both legs over and nearly falling. He held white-knuckled onto the fence as David surged forward, hands out, like he was gonna catch Matteo before he could give himself a concussion on the poolside cement. 

He scrambled down in a less-than graceful series of hesitant movements, keeling over somewhat and swinging his arms like a maniac when he landed. David laughed at him behind his hands, trying to keep his voice down. No one was around at this hour, but the nearest neighbors to the public pool weren’t too far off, and they’d agree beforehand to stay quiet.

The moon shone on the water, making visible the reflections of the trees on the pool’s surface. It was like seeing a bird at night— uncanny, though the same sight would be monotonous when the sun was up.

David stepped up next to Matteo and took in a shaky breath.

“OK,” he said, and peeled off his shirt.

Matteo followed suit, and stumbled after David in the dark, leaping into the water in one fell swoop, like a fishing line being cast.

Submerged, Matteo opened his eyes, and there David was, the silhouette of him, barely visible in the water and the dark. His skin, so close, revealed and shrouded all at once, was a ghost to Matteo, a specter which chilled him to the bone. He went up for air.

David came up a moment later, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Matteo stared at his shoulders, bare and wet. He wanted to run his hand along them, like you might brush dust off a shelf or run your fingers over a velvet couch. 

“It’s kind of spooky here,” David said. “At night.”

Matteo smiled. “Afraid of pool monsters?”

“You never know.” David splashed Matteo, and turned, swimming away. Matteo watched his figure, harder to make out the further he moved away, until David ducked underwater. He stared at the spot where he’d disappeared, waiting, starting to count, his chest clenching with nerves.

David burst out of the water hands first, roaring like a cartoon lake monster, and splashing Matteo hard. Matteo cracked up, struggling to tread water as he gasped through laughter, and David grinned smugly, his teeth catching the moonlight and shining like pearls in a display window. 

Matteo dove to the bottom of the pool when his laughter had stopped, skimming the floor with his hand, trying to clear his mind of the hundreds of frantic thoughts; all fighting to be heard at once. He tilted his head back when he surfaced, staring up at the scattered stars, pointedly avoiding looking, again, at David, and his splendor, almost purple in the moonlight.

He heard the water move and angled his chin low enough to look without really looking. David moved forward in slow, hesitant jolts, like a chess piece sliding across squares. 

Matteo closed his eyes, moved his head down, and when he opened them again, David was in front of him; nearly still but for the movements to stay above water. Matteo’s chest rose and fell fast, and he tried to make a blank face, but he thought he must look terrified; like he really _had_ seen a ghost. 

David was close enough to see, even in the low light. His face was a Picasso; dark, wide brushstrokes and hard angles, only softened by how difficult it was to see at all. His eyes darted around Matteo’s face. Matteo felt them like a physical touch, like ice on his skin. David looked at Matteo’s mouth. He kept looking at Matteo’s mouth.

Matteo opened his mouth. “I—”

David floated forward, almost involuntarily, it seemed; as if they were in the sea, and he’d been pushed by a wave. Matteo froze— went so still he worried he might fall to the bottom of the pool like a dropped stone. He couldn’t breathe, and all the thoughts which had been crowding him out, making him claustrophobic in his own mind, retreated together, at once, leaving him like a clean sheet of paper, about to be dipped in a bucket of ink. He looked at David’s mouth, and then he closed his eyes; looking at nothing, not wanting to see anything; just wanting to _feel_.

Then, as if summoned by their stillness, a caw sounded, loud and brusque. They jolted, splashing each other and themselves with the movement, and looked to the source of the sound. On the fence, nearly disappearing into the cover of night, a crow sat, and ruffled its feathers— though it didn’t caw again.

They were silent for a long moment, floating vaguely away from each other— but still close. So close their feet brushed underwater.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” David asked in a whisper. “Seeing a bird at night?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CAMPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The hike wasn’t long, but Matteo would have worried they’d get lost, anyway, if they’d never done this before. They weren’t on the main trail, and the path they _were_ taking was barely distinguishable from the rest of the forest floor. But Jonas always insisted they go this way— he hated taking the easy route, for anything to do with camping. He hated those new tents that were pre-assembled, and if you even _mentioned_ “glamping” in his presence, he’d go off the rails. Matteo was pretty sure Jonas didn’t think it counted as camping if you didn’t have at least a slight risk of dying.

They found a good clearing lakeside and put their packs down, and Matteo immediately reapplied his bug spray. He already smelled basically toxic from how much of the stuff was coating his skin, but he wasn’t taking any risks. He hated almost nothing more than bug bites, and thus, of course, was the most susceptible to them of everyone he’d ever met. It was like mosquitos targeted him out of spite.

Abdi and Carlos were already trying to light a fire, and Jonas yelled at them as Hanna and Sam helped him assemble the tents. David was dipping his feet in the water. Matteo approached him slowly.

“Careful of lake monsters,” he said.

David looked over and smiled at him. “Good call. I’d say we’re much likelier to run into one here than at the pool.”

Matteo swallowed and bent over, undoing his laces to stick his feet in next to David’s. The water was ice-cold; run-off from the mountains, where, even now, there were still snowy peaks. He shivered, but didn’t step back, and David looked over at him, his gaze intense, and swayed slightly; though there was no breeze to speak of.

“You guys are gonna start a forest fire,” Jonas yelled.

“We’re just making a little one,” Carlos said.

“So said Icarus.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, dude.”

“Like you would know.”

David and Matteo joined to pitch the last tent, just as Carlos and Abdi hooted in victory; having created a small flame.

“I’ll go get firewood,” Abdi said, scrambling up.

“No,” Carlos said. “This one’s mine. You can use the firewood for the group fire.”

“Group fire? Man, what are you talking about?”

Carlos scooped up the dirt and twigs beneath the little flame, and carried the fire away in his hands like you might hold a small animal.

_“Dude!”_

“Abdi,” Jonas said. “Make yourself useful and go hang up our food.”

“But he just—”

“You want bears here tonight? Huh? Is that what you want?”

Abdi muttered under his breath but walked away. Matteo and David were shaking with quiet laughter.

With the tents pitched, Hanna and Sam carelessly tossed their sleeping bags inside one and hurriedly peeled off their clothes, running toward the water and hollering as they went.

Matteo looked out over the water as David and Jonas unrolled all the sleeping bags, quietly discussing sleeping arrangements. The water was still and a stunning shade of dark turquoise; reflecting the colors of the sky and the trees at once; like paints mixed together on a palette. There was a small island in the center of the lake, made almost entirely of rock, with a few scraggly trees growing out of it inexplicably, like those dandelions you sometimes see growing in the middle of a sidewalk or a highway. Hanna and Sam were swimming toward it already, and David came to stand beside Matteo again shortly after, looking out at the island with a glint in his eye.

“Wanna go?” Matteo asked. David chewed on his lower lip, hesitant, and Matteo reminded him, as soothingly as he could, “You’re out to everyone here.”

David paused, and nodded. He pulled his shirt off in a single, swift movement, and sat down to wriggle out of his jeans.

Matteo had seen him already, at the pool, in the dark. But this was different. This was _so_ different. It was like walking through a closed museum at night, with all but the exit lights off, and then walking through again, during the day, with the white walls and the overhead bulbs, and some of the paintings even lit with individual fixtures; the better to make out the details and individual brushstrokes. Matteo stared at David’s bare brown skin; his scars; his stomach; his collarbones, and he felt light-headed. He wondered if it was safe to swim when he felt like this— like he hadn’t eaten in hours, or like he’d run a mile, collapsed, and jumped up too fast immediately after. The world was out of focus, everything spinning except David, the focal point of everything, the reason to have sight at all.

Matteo wondered if he’d always felt like this— if somewhere, in the unaccessible parts of his mind, he’d longed to touch David differently than he did now; he’d seen his eyes or his mouth or his hair and felt the kind of impossible yearning which he’d only ever read about in required school books; Oscar Wilde; Charlotte Brontë; F. Scott Fitzgerald. Had it been there, lying dormant, waiting for its moment to erupt? Or was it brand new— birthed with the name _David_ , with the smile his best friend wore now, that he finally looked more like himself?

Peaches and flowers and baby birds; born in the summer; ripe and blossoming; breathing for the first time in the sunshine and the heat. He knew what they felt like. He felt it too.

Matteo took off his shirt. “Race you out there.”

*

Sam stood up on the rock, spreading out her arms. “I’m Peter Pan!” she yelled. She leaned towards her friends in the water, precariously balanced, so Matteo cringed at the sight. “Welcome to Neverland, losers!”

Once on the little island, David and Matteo joined Sam on her rock, tossing stones into the water and pointing out the occasional jumping fish. Abdi had swam out too, and he was collecting pine cones, for reasons indeterminable— and seemingly without the forethought of a plan to bring them back to shore. Hanna stayed in the water, floating on her back, her hair fanning out around her, drawing all the more attention to the buzzed side of her head. Sam wolf-whistled at her.

It did feel like they were in Neverland, or some other isolated, magical kingdom, generally reserved for the youthful and passionate. It wasn’t a huge lake by any means, but sitting on the island in the middle of it, the distance not just from shore, but from the rest of the world, felt astronomical. “Can we stay here?” he heard himself say.

Sam was distracted, trying to make out whatever Hanna was mouthing at her from the water. David heard Matteo, though, and he looked at him again, that heavy look Matteo felt sunken by, and he nodded. “I’ll stay if you stay,” he said.

Matteo closed his eyes, suddenly incapable of keeping them open, and let out a long breath, like a train whistling. When he opened his eyes again, Jonas was standing on the shore, waving at them to come in. Matteo sighed.

Back on their campground, Jonas had started a proper fire and set up his equipment to make hot dogs and S’mores. Abdi ducked into his tent and came back with a whole cucumber. They gaped at him.

“What?” he said. “I figured we needed a vegetable.”

Laughter erupted, and Abdi loudly refuted the idea that the cucumber in question had been intended for any purpose besides eating.

When everyone else had hot dogs, Jonas looked over his shoulder at Carlos, who was crouched between some brush by the shore. “Carlos? Were you planning on joining us?”

“Hold on,” he said.

David and Matteo took their plates to the side of the water and peered sideways over at Carlos, who was ducked over his tiny flame, poking at it with twigs. Matteo snorted a laugh into David’s shoulder, which was shaking, too, with amusement.

“Oh no,” Carlos said, sounding distraught. “She went out.”

 _“She?”_ Matteo asked.

Carlos jumped, and frowned at them. “Shut up.”

“We’re gonna wash up before s’mores,” Hanna said, standing up with Sam by the fire. Matteo looked over his shoulder at them as Jonas went bug-eyed.

“Is that _shampoo?_ ”

“Yeah, so?”

“You can’t use _shampoo!_ This is a natural stream! You’ll contaminate the water!”

“Dude. Chill.”

“It’s organic,” Hanna said.

“That doesn’t—”

They dashed away, laughing, and Jonas groaned but let them go.

Night was starting to fall, and the frogs and crickets were slowly growing in volume; like music playing from a car radio, drawing closer on a long road. Jonas had packed his guitar, and he pulled it out as Abdi made the first s’more of the night, nearly poking himself with the skewer.Jonas was singing Hozier when the girls came back, and David and Matteo were sitting close together on a piece of driftwood.

Carlos finally abandoned his fallen flame and joined them around the actual, proper campfire. “Did you guys hear about the girl who died up here?”

“Oh, no,” Sam said. “Tell me we’re not telling ghost stories.”

“No, she really died.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “How?”

“She drowned.”

Hanna frowned. “That’s depressing.”

“Yeah, but now—”

“Let me guess,” Sam said. “She haunts the woods?”

“Shut up, OK? It’s a campfire! You want to _not_ tell scary stories?”

“Fine, Freddie Prinze Junior. What’s she do?”

“She goes out to the main road, and waves down passing drivers. She tells them she and a friend were camping, but her friend got hurt, and she needs help. She says she doesn’t have service, and couldn’t carry them out by herself. So they go to help her, and then— she kills them.”

“What’s that got to do with drowning?”

“Well… she drowns them, I guess.”

Abdi frowned. “Why would they go with her? Why wouldn’t they just call 911?”

“No service. I _said_ that.”

“Do you think people ever just, like, tell her to get lost? Like bad samaritans? And then they live?”

“So the moral of the story is don’t help people,” Matteo said.

“There’s no _moral._ She’s a ghost, not a fairy god mother.”

“It’s pretty dark if you really think about it,” Hanna said. “People die in places like this, in these horrific ways— like, real people— and they just become these stupid ghost stories kids use to freak each other out. Imagine being that girl’s mom and hearing people talk about your dead kid like that.”

“I dunno,” David said, grinning. “I’d kind of like to be a ghost story. It’s better than not being remembered at all, right?”

“I’m with him,” Jonas said. “Still spooking people even after death? That’s a full life, man. That’s a legacy.”

Sam snorted. “Some legacy.”

Jonas ducked his head under his newly-made s’more, trying to keep it from falling apart, and to the ground. David handed Matteo a skewer and two marshmallows. Matteo always liked to use two. He pressed his lips together, turning his grin in toward his mouth.

“Anyway, it’s not ghosts we have to worry about,” Jonas said. “ _Bears_ are the real threat out here.”

Abdi grinned and opened his mouth. Matteo pointed his skewer at him and fixed him with a glare. “Do _not_ make that joke.” He stuffed a marshmallow in his mouth; maintaining his glare for emphasis.

“Yeah,” David said. “Only us queers can make queer jokes.”

Matteo choked on the marshmallow.

*

“Are you sure?” Matteo asked for what must have been the tenth time. “You can share with us instead, we don’t mi—”

“Matteo,” Jonas whispered. “Dude. You’ve got this. Don’t freak out, man. You guys have had, like, thousands of sleepovers, right?”

Matteo nodded slowly.

“See, no big deal. You’re gonna be fine, dude. Don’t sabotage this for yourself.”

“But I—”

Jonas slapped his back and turned to Carlos and Abdi. “Bunk mates!” he said, too loud for the quiet night.

“Tent mates,” Carlos corrected.

“Shut up, dude.”

Hanna and Sam had already zipped their tent shut, and phone-speaker-quality Janelle Monae was playing quietly from inside. Matteo played nonchalant as he followed David into their tent. Jonas was right. This was just another night. They’d done this before. Nothing had changed.

Except everything had changed, and the sound of the zipper closing them in was like hell’s gates slamming shut— although Matteo wasn’t sure which side of them he was on.

David didn’t make eye contact as he crawled up the tent and wriggled into his sleeping bag. Matteo followed suit, although _his_ sleeping bag had a pretty sizable tear on the side, so he was less wriggling in than wrapping himself up as if with a blanket.

David pulled his beanie down low over his ears and let out a shaky breath. “I always forget how cold it gets at night out here,” he said in a low voice. “It seems impossible that I could actually be _cold_ when it was so hot today.”

Matteo nodded in agreement. “The trees make a big difference.”

“Yeah, and the lake probably doesn’t help.”

Matteo told himself nothing was going to happen tonight. They’d camped out a hundred times before and nothing had ever happened. They were already in their sleeping bags, zipped up, separated by physical boundaries. They were talking about the _weather_.

“Matteo,” David said.

“Yeah?”

David turned on his side. His arms were outside of his sleeping bag, one under his makeshift pillow, the other by his cheek. “Do you remember when we were thirteen, and we snuck out on the fourth of July, and rode our bikes to the old house on Pine Street?”

“The haunted one,” Matteo said, nodding. “I was so scared I think I actually peed myself a little.”

David laughed into his pillow. He clenched his hand in the fabric, and met Matteo’s eyes. “I thought you were so brave, though.”

“ _What? Why?_ How? I was shaking like a hyper-active poodle.”

“But you weren’t afraid to look afraid,” David said. His eyes were earnest on Matteo’s, and Matteo’s pulse sped up, like it was preparing for something. “You hid behind me. You asked me to protect you. You didn’t care about— I don’t think you even _thought_ about looking weak. You trusted me. You trusted me not to tease you. You trusted me to protect you.”

“I still trust you,” Matteo said.

David took in a loud, shuddering breath. “I wanted to kiss you so badly.”

Matteo’s eyes went wide; his heart stopped; his breath caught like a butterfly in a net. Somehow, through his dry throat and total lack of oxygen, he managed to ask, “Why didn’t you?”

David was looking at his mouth again. There was no reasonable shadow of a doubt left— that’s exactly where David was looking. At his mouth.

“I didn’t want you to want me then. I didn’t want people to see us together and think we were straight. That I was your girlfriend.”

Matteo nodded. But then— he hesitated— he asked, “And now?”

David surged forward, and all Matteo’s breath left him at once.

Matteo’d thought it was quiet out here, by the lake, in the woods, but it wasn’t, not when he was kissing David. A thousand sounds came at him from every direction; his ears rang; it was so _loud._

David’s mouth moved against his with the kind of enthusiastic urgency of a loosed wild cat, sprinting after prey. Matteo’s skin was on fire, he felt sweat on the small of his back and he kicked out of his crappy sleeping bag, drawing David closer to him, letting David slide over him and bracket him with his arms. David bit Matteo’s lip and the roof of their tent vanished; Matteo saw stars; millions of them, brighter than they’d ever been before. He ran his tongue under David’s upper lip and David shuddered above him— like he was the earth, David the storm cloud, booming with thunder. Matteo felt the strikes of lightning when David put his mouth on Matteo’s throat, and under his ear.

“Now,” David whispered, “I’m done waiting.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay y'all!!! i was trying to meet an end-of-the-month word count goal for the book I'm writing. hope u enjoy this update <3 we're getting close to the end here i think :O <3

Matteo stretched out his legs, touching his toes to his headboard. He flipped on his side, facing David, and David flipped on his side, facing him. Matteo was holding in a giddy laugh, and David smiled at him, raising up on his elbow. Neither of them spoke, and David’s hand tapped at his duvet, until finally he sat up fully, crossing his legs under himself and taking his walkie talkie with him. “OK. Enough. I’m coming over.”

Matteo grinned, sitting up, too, then standing and walking over to the window, pressing his forehead to the glass. He held the walkie talkie up close to his mouth. “My mom will wake up.”

“We shouldn’t have told her,” David said, groaning.

Matteo laughed. “Well… we didn’t, technically.”

Matteo’s mom had walked in on her son and David making out on his bed the same day they’d gotten home from the camping trip, and had promptly declared a ban on sleepovers. And closed doors.

David’s dad was more lenient on the closed door thing, though, so _that_ rule, at least, had yet to cause any great distress.

The sleepover one, on the other hand.

“I’ll tie a rope to my bedpost,” David said, “and we can string it between our windows, and I’ll monkey bar over there.”

Matteo shook with laughter, falling back on his bed. “I would prefer that you not risk grievous industry to spend the night with me.”

“I’d risk death,” David said, putting on a movie-trailer level dramatic tone, and Matteo giggled, curling up on his side again and staring over at David, his stomach a fluttery, pleasant-sick mess. He kept feeling the impulse to pinch himself. _David._ His best friend. They’d kissed. Like, _kissed._ And not just once— not on a dare, or because they were drunk. It hadn’t been a one-off, a slip in judgement, a mistake. David was staring at him like he wanted nothing in the entire known universe like he wanted to kiss Matteo again.

“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” Matteo said, still smiling, incapable of stopping. “In person, I mean.”

“That’s ages away.” David stacked his pillows under his head, never looking away from Matteo. “Just tell me I’m not dreaming.”

Matteo ducked his face into his bed covers, feeling his face flame and his smile attempting to grow into his cheeks, his hairline, up and off his face entirely, like a strange, joyful crown. He looked at David through one eye, keeping the other squeezed closed. “You’re not dreaming.”

David sighed. “That’s what you always say.”

Matteo laughed. “When do I say that?”

“In my dreams.”

Matteo made a strangled noise and buried his face again. “This is why my mom won’t let you sleep over.”

“She’s a smart woman.”

Matteo threw a pillow at David— or at his own window, anyway. David laughed. “You got me.”

Matteo wanted to say, _Yeah. I did._

“We should probably sleep,” he said.

“Don’t sleep in all day tomorrow,” David said. “I’ll miss you too much.”

Matteo groaned. “You can’t just say stuff like that.”

“Sorry,” David said, “I’m making up for lost time here. I’ve got quotas to meet. Not everything’s about you, you know.”

Matteo giggled, shaking his head into his pillow. “Idiot.”

“What’s that? Sorry, you’re breaking up. Didn’t copy. Did you say something?”

“I said _idiot!_ ”

“Matteo!” Matteo leapt to the end of his bed, tucking himself and his walkie under the covers as his mother flung open his door. “It is two in the morning!”

“It’s one thirty,” Matteo muttered. He grinned lopsidedly when his mother shot him dagger eyes. “Plus it’s summer!”

“Go to sleep,” she said. She flung back his duvet and grabbed the walkie talkie, looking straight at David, who’d poorly hidden himself under his pillow. “That goes for you too, young man.”

“Yes ma’am. Sorry ma’am.”

“Yeah, sure you are.”

She dropped the walkie and left the room, and Matteo crawled to the end of his bed again, looking over at David.

“Tomorrow,” David said, “I’m going to look for rope.”

*

The sun beat down on them, making Matteo feel like an ice cube on pavement; like he might melt any moment. They approached the school at a glacial pace, even those of them on boards made lazy in their movements by the lethargy of the summer sun.

Sam pulled Hanna over the fence, and they ran into the middle of the field, right in the thick of the swarm of butterflies. It was a tornado of orange around them, swallowing Hanna’s hair just as it made Sam’s seem a million degrees brighter, like a neon popsicle on a white countertop. Sam jumped into Hanna’s arms, her blue braids hiding their faces from view as they kissed.

Jonas groaned. He nudged Matteo’s shoulder and shot him a deeply engraved frown. “You guys aren’t gonna be like that, are you?” He sighed. “I’m so single.”

“You’re a bachelor, dude,” Carlos said, slapping his shoulder encouragingly. “Any lady would be lucky to have you.”

“Hm,” David said. He frowned, but there was a glint in his eyes as he looked at Jonas, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

David leapt the fence. “You coming, Mr. Florenzi?”

Matteo nearly tripped over his own feet going after him. Jonas’s groans followed him as he went.

David pulled Matteo toward him as Matteo was still walking forward, causing him to lose his balance and tumble them both to the ground. They nearly took out dozens of butterflies as they went down, but David was just laughing, as Jonas shouted complaints. David flipped Jonas off and licked up Matteo’s cheek.

Matteo squirmed and squealed, laughing and trying to wriggle free as David pinned his legs down, and butterflies tickled his skin everywhere it was bare. “You taste like sunscreen,” David said.

“I didn’t put any sunscreen on my mouth.”

“Oh, come _on!_ ” Jonas shouted. David grinned and ducked down, as Matteo arched up. Sam wolf-whistled at them. David’s hand was on Matteo’s hip, under his shirt. He tasted like peach iced tea, and the stubble on his upper lip tickled Matteo’s.

Matteo didn’t feel like he was doing something as simple as kissing. He felt like he was being animated; his skin made of bright, artificial colors, his body a series of lines, everywhere bumping into the lines which made up David, until they were a single abstract piece of art, shouting emotions too big to be compressed into words.

No one had been surprised, when they’d come out of their tent like this, draped over each other like jackets over the back of a couch. Jonas had held his hand out toward Abdi, who’d passed him a twenty dollar bill with a sigh. Matteo couldn’t believe it, really— that he was the only one who hadn’t seen this coming.

But then, he’d never been the optimist of the group.

Back on the pavement, Matteo and Hanna got back on their boards, passing up the rest of the group, occasionally grabbing onto each other’s shoulders as they shook with laughter, shouting back at their friends to catch up. Matteo thought about when Hanna had first come out to him— the rush of relief he’d felt, knowing he wasn’t alone.

He remembered what she’d said to him, when she started dating Sam. She’d had a rough time of it that year, at school. Her girl friends more or less abandoned her after she came out, and she’d had to delete her Instagram because of all the nasty comments she got. She’d been tough about it, but it took a toll. But she’d looked at him, when Sam was walking towards them— coming to pick her up. “It’s worth it,” she’d said.

Matteo looked over his shoulder at David. He understood what she meant, now, _really._ And he agreed.

David sprinted to catch up, reminding Matteo abruptly that he did track, that he was _good_ at track, and he jumped onto the back of Matteo’s board, nearly knocking him off. Matteo cracked up, but somehow maintained their balance, and placed David’s hands on his hips as he kicked at the ground, keeping up their momentum.

“This was a mistake,” David said, burying his face in Matteo’s shoulder.

“Nah,” Matteo said, “ _this_ is a mistake,” and he bent down, grabbing at David’s legs, making him shout, and nearly toppling them over as he maneuvered David onto his back, holding onto his legs, and now, with better control of the board, wobbling them enough to make David scream.

“Put me down!”

Matteo cracked up, and Hanna came to a stop, shouting at Sam to catch up, the gleam of inspiration clear in her wide smile.

“I knew dating a skater was a bad idea,” David said into his ear.

Matteo beamed. “Dating?”

“Shut _up._ ”

The sun was still brutal on Matteo’s skin, but Matteo’s cheeks weren’t red from being burnt.

*

Laura shot her water gun into her mouth, and Amira made a gagging sound. “That’s hose water.”

“Yeah, so I’m building my immunity.”

Matteo dug his heels into the dirt, leaning back in his folding beach chair and staring ahead at the path, though he knew it would be a while still before David showed up.

Amira squirted his cheek. “Come on, lazy. You’re dating a jock now. You should be running with him.”

Matteo snorted. “You mean running a minimum of fifty feet behind him?”

“More than that,” Laura said.

Matteo squirted her. “I’m not _that_ bad. I work out.”

Amira cracked up. “Sure you do!”

“I exercise! Shut up.”

“OK, prove it. Drop and give us fifty.”

“Yeah,” Laura said, lifting her legs, “Right here. I could use a foot rest.”

“You guys are bullies.”

Laura and Amira reached around Matteo to high five. He leaned his head back, staring up at the clouds. “Check it out,” he said, pointing. “Cowboy boot.”

Laura and Amira craned their necks. “Looks more like a giraffe,” Amira said.

“Doesn’t look like anything to me,” Laura said.

Matteo sighed. “Well, not anymore. It broke.”

“Clouds don’t _break_ ,” Amira said.

“Drifted apart. Whatever.”

Amira jumped up. “I’m gonna get more drinks.” She strode away, leaving Matteo and Laura alone. Matteo dropped his head and briefly closed his eyes, shooting the water gun at his bare feet. He dug his toes into the wet grass.

“So,” Laura said. Matteo looked at her. She grinned. “You’re dating my brother.”

Matteo groaned. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m not being weird.”

“Quit it.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re looking at me like the older sister in an 80s movie. I’m not Molly Ringwald, Laura. I’ve always been here.”

“I know,” Laura said, looking away. She shot her water gun in her mouth again. “You’re not Molly Ringwald. You’re Watts.”

Matteo grinned, despite himself. “I’m pretty sure she was a lesbian.”

“They were both bi, if you ask me.”

“Molly?”

“No, Watts and Eric. Molly was definitely a lesbian. High femme.”

Matteo laughed. 

Laura looked over her shoulder, at Amira, coming back. Then she locked eyes with Matteo, her expression earnest, making Matteo’s stomach flip with sudden nerves. She _was_ David’s sister, even if she was also his friend, even if they’d known each other since they were in diapers. He wanted her approval. He wanted her to think he was good enough for her brother.

“I’m just saying,” she said, lowering her voice a bit, leaning in. “Took you long enough.”

Matteo, surprised, broke out into a wide grin. His belly went warm like he’d downed a huge mug of tea, and he could feel his eyes going squinty.

Amira shot him in the back of the head. He leapt up, shouting in protest, and she took a shot at the center of his chest. Laura cracked up, and he went with it, collapsing backwards onto the grass, grasping at his chest, holding his wet hand up to his face with noises of horror, as if it were coated in blood.

He didn’t hear him coming over his own commotion and the girls’ raucous laughter, but Matteo was alerted to David’s presence, first, by his shadow coming over him, and then David’s bemused, but smiling face, looking down at him from above. He was soaked with sweat, his shirt clinging to his skin and his hair dripping down onto Matteo. Matteo didn’t care. He brought his knees up in a sudden movement, knocking David’s legs out from under him, collapsing him diagonally across himself. David shouted in protest, but Matteo just grabbed him by the front of his shirt, dragging him up and toward his face, bringing his mouth down to meet with his own with an urgent kind of hunger, snaking up from his stomach to his throat, and lodging there. He sucked on David’s tongue, and David shuddered and pulled away, a ragged breath escaping him as he buried his face in Matteo’s shoulder. “My _sister_ is here, Matteo.”

“Oh no, not your _sister._ ”

Laura was ignoring them, anyway, trying to steal a popsicle from a grinning Amira. Matteo grabbed David’s face; slid his hands up, until he was raking his hands through David’s thick hair.

“I’m all sweaty and gross,” David whispered.

“Yeah,” Matteo said, kissing up David’s cheeks, then down his throat. “Disgusting.”

“Disgusting is right!” Laura yelled. She had Matteo’s water gun as well as her own, and she shot them both at once.

David sighed, but he was smiling. “What did I say?”

Matteo kissed his nose. “Worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i trick anyone with that opening paragraph?? even for a second?? pls don't tell me if i didn't i can't afford to not think im clever in this economy


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry for the delay!!! im getting v close to the end of the book im writing, so its been consuming my time. we're getting close to the end of this too!! hope u enjoy the update <3

Matteo hardly ever knew what he wanted. In restaurants he often ordered whatever the other person was having. In clothing stores he grabbed whatever he looked at first. Even when he was really little he’d never known what to say when people asked what he wanted to be what he grew up; what he wanted to do with his life.

Maybe that was why it’d taken him so long to realize he wanted _this._ But at the same time, that was why he was so deeply baffled by the whole thing. When he looked at David he _knew_ he wanted him, like he’d never known any desire in his life. He’d gotten so used to asking for whatever was easiest; to trying for whatever was most in reach. He’d gone with the flow for so long, doing what seemed expected of him.

He felt like he’d been jolted awake. David was a bucket of ice water, and blinking abruptly into consciousness, Matteo was a straight, tall shot of desire. He was drunk on it; stumbling about like a toddler just learning to walk. But he was so sure of himself, now. There was no doubt, no confusion, no temptation to dumbly nod along to whatever assumptions were made about him. His feelings for David were as legible as a grandparent’s oversized text-font and as unwavering as the single remaining column in an otherwise crumbled bed of ancient ruins.

The only thing Matteo wasn’t sure about was what to do with it all. When David was around he wanted to touch him, all the time, everywhere; to run his hands through his hair; to feel their calves against each other; to bury his nose in the dip of David’s collarbones. Even when people were around he itched to throw himself onto David, to latch onto him like an orphaned monkey on a caretaker. It was all he could do to limit himself to hand-holding and resting his head on his shoulder or his back. And when David _wasn’t_ around Matteo was glued to his phone, waiting for David to reply to his texts like the science nerd in a kid’s movie waiting to see if their wacky invention had been sold to NASA, or whatever. His mom was beyond fed up with him, and he didn’t blame her. But he didn’t think he could stop if he tried.

It seemed so obvious, looking at David now. The sun lit up his brown skin and dark eyes; he was a sculpture made of earth itself, and he put his namesake’s marble form to shame; Matteo looked at him and thought Michelangelo should be mortified by how his creation fell short. And he wondered, always, how he’d lasted so long thinking he only wanted to be friends.

David gave him a bemused, affectionate smile, and ran a finger down Matteo’s neck, like you might touch the spine of a very old book. “You’re giving me that look again.”

Matteo couldn’t say everything he was thinking, everything he felt, out loud. Not for fear of scaring David off— he was almost terrified by how assured he felt of David’s mutual feelings— but because it was too much. It was just too much. If he let a trickle spill out, the dam would break, and he would never again be able to talk about anything else.

He was thinking how some people lived their whole lives and never really fell in love. He was thinking how people went through relationships— marriages, even— like trying on jeans; piling up discarded lovers and years of their lives until they found something that came even close to what he was feeling right now, looking at his best friend. Who was looking back, feeling the same. It was the kind of thing to make you believe in magic. To make you believe in God. Miracles had to exist. He was in one.

Matteo kissed David rather than try to express any of this out loud, the kind of soft, slow kiss that felt less like being thrust into an already boiling pot and more like the heat was being slowly, gradually turned up beneath him; so he almost didn’t notice, until he pulled away, that he was burning up.

Something hit the back of Matteo’s head, and he turned, looking out of the bed of the truck to where their friends were sitting on blankets and towels in the grass. He searched around him and found a hot dog bun, clearly the culprit. He eyed his friends, none of whom were looking their way, and decided, lobbing the bun at Jonas.

Jonas grinned immediately, looking over. “For real, you guys are gonna miss it, though.”

Amira held up her phone to check the time. “It’s not for another half an hour, Jonas. Leave them alone.”

Jonas pouted. Matteo looked up at the sky, and the stars, searching in vain for the meteor shower which hadn’t yet arrived.

“I love star-gazing,” David said. “It makes me feel so inconsequential, you know?”

Matteo leaned back, resting his cheek on David’s shoulder. “And that’s a good thing?”

David nodded. “I’m a cog in the universe, like every other plant and animal and grain of sand that’s ever existed. It doesn’t matter what people think, or say about me. It doesn’t change that I’m exactly as big— and small— a part of the universe as anyone else.”

Matteo stared at him. “You’re a huge cog in _my_ universe,” he said, without thinking.

David beamed, and wrinkled his nose like he always did when he was embarrassed, and shoved Matteo away before pulling him into another kiss. “Cornball.”

Carlos appeared beside them, one hand on the side of the truck and the other holding the beer he’d just grabbed from the front seat. “Someone said something about a _huge cog?”_

Matteo threw himself over David to get at Carlos, who howled and laughed, dashing away. David shook with laughter. “You brought that one on yourself.”

“Oh, really?” Matteo asked, immediately straddling David, and tickling him ferociously. “Did I? You think?”

“Uncle, uncle!” David cried out, giggling madly, tears springing up in his eyes.

“That’s what I thought.”

*

David jostled Matteo awake, whispering in his ear even as he shook him somewhat harshly. “Matteo. It’s starting.”

Matteo blinked into consciousness, immediately looking up, and taking in an awed breath at the sight above him, like a rainstorm of shooting stars. David kissed his cheek, and he shivered; everywhere amazed, and smiling without meaning to.

“How do you think cavemen reacted to meteor showers?” Abdi wondered out loud.

“Murder,” Sam said, definitively. Hanna laughed.

“Probably like we do,” Jonas said, a smile in his voice. “I bet they weren’t as different as we think.”

“Do animals see beauty?” Carlos asked. David laughed into Matteo’s shoulder. “Do you think dogs like meteor showers?”

“We should have brought Cupcake,” Sam said, mournful. “Then we’d know.”

“True,” Hanna said. “If any dog was going to recognize beauty, it would be cupcake.”

“I think dolphins do,” Jonas said. “I read that somewhere.”

“Most female birds seek out beautiful mates,” David said. “The more vibrant their colors and patterns, the more likely they are to be sought after.”

“Just like humans,” Jonas said.

“So the difference between us and birds is that we appreciate beauty in non-sexy contexts as well as sexy contexts,” Carlos said.

“You guys are idiots,” Amira said.

“Birds can fly,” Sam said.

“So?”

“So meteor showers are probably like whatever if you can fly.”

“That’s a solid point.”

They stayed for a while after it ended, just whispering and staring up at the night sky; trying not to fall asleep. Matteo didn’t want to go home, and have to say good night to David. He kissed up and down the side of his face, wondering what it was about art in human form that insisted on being touched. He’d never cared much, before, about touching— hugs, cuddling, back-pats and leg-brushes; he’d been indifferent to it all, neither for nor against. Now he felt like he’d abandon all his other senses without a second thought if that’s what it took to go on touching David; kissing him; squeezing his hips; digging his fingers into his shoulders, and hair. He felt superhuman with his mouth on David’s neck, more magic than person; a waterfall; rockslide; tornado in human form.

“OK,” Amira said, jumping up. “Curfew. Let’s go.”

The group groaned in a chorus, but it was only moments before they were all piled back into the truck, like a re-packed suitcase which seemed so much spacier on the way out. The quiet town streets were dimly lit by the stars and streetlights, and the occasional shifting light of a TV or computer screen. Matteo thought he heard a blender when they turned one corner, and a baby crying at another.

He, Jonas, and David jumped out of the back of the truck at the same time, waving to those who were left as they drove off. Jonas held a hand out to them and walked away. Matteo stood with David in the middle of the street; the kind of surreal feeling came over him which only struck at night, when he stood places he wouldn’t in the light of day. He imagined every car in the world coming from either direction, speeding towards them, now, but stopping just short of them, as if hitting an invisible wall; maybe even being thrust up, like the biblical waves, parting while still high, crested, so no harm could come to those who stood within.

David kissed him. “I must be dreaming,” he whispered into Matteo’s mouth.

“We’re awake,” Matteo whispered back. “I think we’re the only ones.”

*

Laura liked to listen to jazz when she cooked, old jazz, the kind which makes you feel like a character in a black white film. She was playing “Summertime,” now, and she sang all of Ella Fitzgerald’s parts while David, more quietly, sang Louis Armstrong’s. There was something mournful about the song, and thus the scene, even as the two of them smiled, and the nostalgia-inducing aromas of homemade fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy filled up the kitchen and the whole house. Matteo had had his hand swatted several times already, trying to get at the mouth-watering ingredients before the meal was complete.

Mia was sitting beside him, now, at the breakfast bar, biting her lip, and the smile there, as she watched Laura dance and cook simultaneously. Matteo kept shooting Laura not-so-subtle thumbs ups, and she shot him back glares. David grinned every time.

David came around the counter to kiss Matteo’s cheek and immediately smear grease where he’d kissed. Matteo swatted him as he laughed and jumped back.

“You guys make a really cute couple,” Mia said.

Matteo blinked at her in surprise, and grinned, feeling his cheeks heating but not knowing any way to prevent it, so giving up trying before he could begin. “Thanks.”

“I think the best relationships come from friendships,” she said. She was looking at Laura again. Matteo hid a laugh in a cough and nodded, chomping down on his fourth biscuit in the last half hour.

Laura pointed at him. “Last one,” she said. “You’ll spoil your appetite.”

Matteo stuck his tongue out at her and grinned at Mia. “I think so too.”

“Are you worried?” Mia asked.

Matteo chewed, distracted by David again as he bent down to retrieve a spice from one of their lower cupboards. “Hm?”

“About being long distance so soon after getting together?”

Matteo looked over at Mia, attention caught and eyebrows furrowing.

“Just, I’d be kind of worried, if my boyfriend was going back to school so far away. You must be dreading the end of the summer.”

Matteo stared at David again, a sick feeling in his stomach as he stuffed the rest of the biscuit in his mouth at once and swallowed it virtually un-chewed. “Who isn't?” he muttered.

“That’s true.”

Matteo pulled up his hood and put his head down on the island. “Can we change the song?” he asked, louder than necessary. “This is a mood killer.”

“OK, uncultured swine, first of all—” Laura started. Her voice cut off, and a moment later, the song changed. Matteo closed his eyes and grabbed another biscuit. Laura didn’t stop him.

David came around the counter again, rubbing Matteo’s back and leaning down. “Is everything OK, Mr. Florenzi?”

Matteo nodded against the counter, grabbing David’s hand and pulling it up to his face, holding it against his cheek and arching his neck to kiss David’s wrist. “Too many biscuits,” he said.

Mia cleared her throat. Matteo kept his eyes closed when David kissed the top of his head and walked away. His palm went sticky with sweat. He curled his hand in toward himself, then tucked it into his pocket. But it still felt empty.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vague spoilers(ish) for It Chapter 2 in here... be warned

There were ripples within the ripples on the surface of the lake, so it looked sort of like that strange, plastic-fabric you see a lot of at airports. But the longer Matteo stared, the more the water seemed to straighten itself out, until there were hardly ripples at all, just the wide, thick rings of the water moving away from itself. He wondered if anything was really changing, or if staring too long was making his vision wonky.

David sat quietly beside him, drawing. It was just the two of them— their friends had all preferred the pool, and it seemed so had any other townsfolk who might, on other days, have been laid out here on picnic blankets or beach chairs. 

Matteo tried desperately to turn his mind off, but it was so quiet here the birds and crickets sounded loud. The empty, noiseless space left room for every pressing anxiety Matteo wanted to drown out. He got up and went to the edge of the water.

“Going in again?” David asked.

Matteo looked out over the water and closed his eyes. It was less quiet, at least, with his eyes closed.

David stood, he heard him coming, and wrapped his arms around Matteo. Matteo caved into it, like a building collapsing, and pushed it away— the fear, the panic, the dreadful sense that he had to remember this moment, because it wouldn’t come again. He leaned back, into David, and felt his mouth on his neck, and wished he could bundle into him, like a kangaroo in a pouch, and disappear there, in the depths of David’s body, where he would be warm. And never, ever alone again.

“Matteo,” David whispered, “what is it?”

“Nothing,” Matteo said, and he meant it. It was _nothing_ , encroaching in on this bright, fiery everything, promising to turn it all to dust.

“Matteo…”

Matteo craned his neck to kiss him, to quiet his worry and feel his closeness. He was _there_. He clung to that.

“Let’s go in.”

*

Matteo ignored the knocking, ignored his phone buzzing, ignored the TV blaring at him about side effects of depression medications. He tucked his head between a pillow and the cushion of the couch, staring with open eyes at the darkness there, and he wondered how he could feel numb and like he was being pulled apart at the same time.

The front door opened— whoever’d been knocking had apparently given up on politeness and etiquette. He heard their footfalls as they approached but he didn’t move. He felt like a little kid with a terrible hiding spot, convinced he wouldn’t be found if he just stayed still.

The couch sunk near his feet, but whoever was there didn’t say anything. After a while the channel changed; Matteo could hear Spongebob prattling on. He was starting to not be able to breathe. He pushed the pillow away but stayed laying down. He looked at the TV, but he saw Hanna beside him in his peripheral vision.

She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “Specific bad, or general bad?”

Matteo closed his eyes. It was a pure, cold shot of embarrassment to be so predictable and easy to read. But it was also a gasping release of breath, a hard press of relief, to be understood.

“Specific.”

She nodded and turned down the TV. Squidward complained at a low volume, and Matteo slid up, just slightly, so he was leaning against the arm of the couch.

“David’s leaving,” he said.

Hanna looked at him, finally. The buzzed side of her head was just starting to grow out again, enough so hair peeked out around her ears like short little tufts of grass. He focused on that, rather than her eyes.

“David always leaves.”

“It’s different now.”

“Why is it different?”

“We weren’t dating. We were just friends before. It’s different.”

Hanna grinned lopsidedly and looked back at the TV. “I don’t think you guys were ever just _friends_.”

Matteo thought about that. He _had_ been thinking about that. But nonetheless. 

“It’s different wanting someone and having them,” he said. “You can want someone from afar.”

“You can have someone from afar too.”

Matteo closed his eyes. He didn’t have the energy to argue.

“You’ve always _had_ each other, Matteo.” Hanna put her hand on his ankle. “David isn’t some guy who thought you were cute for a couple of weeks and is gonna get over you as soon as summer ends. He’s your best friend. You’re _his_ best friend.”

“But what if that’s all he wants to be?” Matteo spoke through gritted teeth, all the muck and grime in his body rushing out, pooling up in his mouth, trying to escape like an overflowing dam.

“What if he goes back to his school and realizes this was all a stupid summer fling and he dumps me for someone with straight As and blonde hair and like… abs or… tits?”

“Matteo,” Hanna laughed, “this isn’t _Grease_.”

“He’s gonna go home, and he’s gonna realize this was all a mistake. He’s gonna tell me he wants to be just friends.”

Hanna’s back straightened and she spoke fiercely. “There’s no such thing as _just_ friends.”

Matteo opened his eyes to stare at her.

She fixed him with her gaze. “I don’t know the future, Matteo. I don’t think he’s gonna do that. The dude’s been pining after you for, like, ever. And he looks at you like you hung the sun, like, some serious Jane Austen, Hallmark movie, Katherine Heigl, puke-level gushy heart eyes, man. But even if he didn’t. Even if he called it off. You were never _just_ friends.” She smiled at him and squeezed his ankle, still held in her hand. “Friends aren’t _just_ anything.”

The gunk in Matteo’s body heated and melted and turned pink and warm, like his cheeks as he looked at his friend. He pressed his hands to his face to try to keep it all in, but it was a _good_ flood now, an overwhelming rush of affection— for her, for David, for _friendship_. She was right. He’d forgotten. There’d been times, when he’d been closed in on himself, closeted in his ugly shame and pungent fear, when he’d thought he might lose them all. But he didn’t. They stayed. His friends— time after time, they’d fought them off, the fires, the monsters, that came at Matteo, that tried to eat him alive. They’d promised, and they’d followed through. They were there. And they weren’t going anywhere.

“I love you,” Hanna said.

“Yeah,” Matteo said, because she did. She really did.

*

Jonas was full sobbing, and Carlos wasn’t much better, as much as he was trying to play it cool.

“You guys are embarrassing,” Sam said, laughing. “That was a _horror_ movie.”

“But he—” Jonas choked out, “—all that time— the _hammock_ —”

David sniffled next to Matteo. Matteo laughed and grinned, wrapping an arm around him. “Got you too, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“I truly did not expect that this was how an evening of watching a clown eat people would end,” Mia said. Laura, next to her, was blowing her nose.

David pulled Matteo in by the front of his jacket and kissed him sloppily. Matteo grinned into his mouth. Jonas cried louder.

“I fucked your mom,” David whispered to Matteo.

Matteo felt his cheeks go hot, and he laughed, pressing his forehead against David’s. “I fucked your mom too.”

“OK, all right,” Sam pushed the group of them out of the theater doors. “Enough.”

They piled into the diner, where Amira waved at them as they slid into a big corner booth. She came up and put her hands on her hips.

“So? How was It?” She beamed at her own pun and Abdi held a hand up for a high five, which she accepted.

“Jonas cried,” Hanna said.

“A lot of people cried!” Jonas protested.

“Mostly Jonas,” Sam said.

“In a horror movie?” Amira tilted her head in confusion. “Weird, Jonas.”

“Shut up!”

Amira grinned and laughed and took their orders. She smacked Jonas upside the head as she walked away.

David and Matteo held hands under the table. David ran his thumb over the back of Matteo’s hand, and Matteo chewed on his lip as he stared blindly down at the menu. He thought about what Hanna had said. And he still knew she was right. He was out of it, now— that quiet darkness which seeped in like a mold and washed away like a receding wave. He sighed and David squeezed his hand. He looked at David’s profile, studying it like an artist might. He knew David would always be there— be his friend— even when he was far away. He wasn’t afraid of losing him completely. 

But he didn’t _want_ to give this up. Even if there was no fear at all— no risk that David might go home, meet someone else, change his mind. He didn’t want to watch him leave. He didn’t want FaceTime calls and late night texts. He wanted this. David, holding his hand. He wanted to look at him and see everything, all the angles, the depth, which eyes allowed and cameras didn’t. He wanted to feel him— he blushed at the thought. He wanted _everything_ with him. And he didn’t want to rush it. He wanted it to happen slowly, constantly, unfurling before him like a long country road. He just didn’t want David to _leave_.

Jonas kicked his foot under the table. “We going to the fair this weekend?”

Matteo shrugged.

David grinned. “I really want to.” He sent David a sparkling look, like light glinting off of a wet stone. “You have to, right? To say goodbye to summer?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “last hurrah.”

Matteo swallowed harshly and forced a grin. “Sure. Yeah. To say goodbye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for how long this took!!! i've been In The Mountains and focusing on my novel. some of y'all probably thought i abandoned this ... i almost never do that, so dw. i know this was a little short, mostly bc this is the penultimate chapter!! hope u enjoyed!!! final ch coming soon


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!!!!!

The diner was packed, mostly with people who, like them, were grabbing a bite before heading out to the last night of the fair. Fair food was ridiculously overpriced, after all, especially if you were only going to throw it up shortly after consuming it.

Abdi and Carlos were rapping and Sam beatboxed, as Hanna cracked up and an elderly man at the counter sent them repeated glares. Amira, off work, was facing backwards in the booth, trying to convince her brothers, in the next booth, to go away. David was holding Matteo’s thigh under the table, rubbing his thumb over the seam of Matteo’s jeans. Matteo wanted to kiss him so bad he thought it might actually make him sick.

“So she— no joke— she slept with not only the girl he cheated on her with, but— this is real, I’m not kidding— his _ex-wife_ —” 

“No!”

“—and his _sister_.”

“Legend!” Jonas cackled, hitting the table.

“This is why bisexuals have more fun,” Mia said, grinning.

“Amen.”

“Hey,” David said, “pans too.” Mia held up a hand for a high five, which he accepted with a wide grin.

“OK,” Laura said, having to peek out from behind Mia’s back to participate in the conversation, as Mia was sitting fully on her lap— the booth was big, but not that big— “lesbians have the best flag, though.”

“The pink and orange one?”

“The one with the battle axe.”

“Oh, no argument there.”

“I’m getting it tattooed,” Hanna said, grinning. 

“It’s gonna be a tramp stamp,” Sam added. Hanna smacked her. “ _Sorry_ ,” Sam beamed, “a sex-positive intersectional feminist stamp.” 

“I’m getting it on my shoulder,” Hanna said, rolling her eyes.

“We’re still in negotiations,” Sam whispered. Hanna smacked her again.

David scraped his fingernail just under the seam of Matteo’s jeans. Matteo choked on a breath and leveled a glare at him. David grinned and licked his lips. Matteo wanted to kill him.

“Can’t wait to throw this up all over y’all,” Jonas said, as the waiter set his plate down in front of him.

“Not me,” Mia said. “ _Not_ a roller coaster person.”

“There aren’t real roller coasters. It’s a fair.”

“Anything that makes people throw up is a roller coaster.”

“We gotta contact Webster’s Dictionary with this.”

They ate quickly as the Beach Boys played and the diner got fuller and louder, like kids on Halloween. Matteo abandoned what was left of his fries to tuck his head into David’s neck, breathing him in and absorbing his warmth like a lost Alaskan hiker. David wrapped his arm around Matteo’s shoulder and pulled him closer, tucking his chin over Matteo’s head. Matteo wanted to arch his neck and whisper to David, quiet, aching words, and hot, pulsing ones. Instead, he bit at David’s neck, reveling in the little sound David made, only loud enough for Matteo to hear. David squeezed his thigh in warning and appreciation, and Matteo pulled away to give him a leering smirk. David shook his head at him, but he was smiling, and his eyes couldn’t stop slipping down to Matteo’s mouth.

Matteo didn’t know what he was ready for, really; he was equal parts nervous and excited any time he thought about going further with David than they had so far. He thought that, were David anyone else, he wouldn’t have given him looks like this, wouldn’t have teased and suggested, especially in public. He wouldn’t want to lead him on and then let him down when he chickened out at the last second, leaving him pent-up and resentful. But he felt _safe_ with David— safe in his affections, safe to be himself, safe to play with this, the growing tension between them, without fear of what would happen if nothing came of it any time soon. David only wanted what Matteo was willing and enthusiastic to give— like so much of what he liked about touching Matteo was how much Matteo wanted to touch him back. 

“That doesn’t even count,” Carlos was saying when Matteo tuned back into the conversations around him. “That’s not a monster. She just has wings. She’s got a totally normal body.”

“Besides the wings.”

“See,” Jonas leaned in. “This brings up an interesting debate. What makes a true monster-fucker? Is it the monster’s physical shape? Their actions? Their morality?”

“Are those girls obsessed with serial killers monster-fuckers?” Sam asked, arching her brows.

“No way,” Abdi shook his head emphatically. “It has to be made up. It can’t be someone anyone could actually have sex with.”

“ _Interesting_ ,” Jonas said.

“You guys are idiots,” Amira said.

“I think if it’s a humanoid, it doesn’t count.”

“What about Pennywise?”

“He takes on different forms, though.”

“Oh, good point.”

Sam shook her head. “But people only want to have _sex_ with the clown.”

“Well, I think that’s an assumption on your part.”

“It’s not.”

“Sam, have you deep-dived into Pennywise smut?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

A collective cry of dismay went round the table and Sam held her hands up in an exaggerated shrug. “It’s like a car crash. I couldn’t look away.”

“You’re not getting any tonight,” Hanna said.

Sam grinned. “We’ll see.” 

“OK,” Amira said, standing up. “On that note. Let’s go.”

*

The fair lights were like colorful, low-to-the-ground stars, only getting more blinding the closer they walked. They paid for their tickets and were told very un-enthusiastically to have a good time by the tired-looking college student working the ticket booth. David took Matteo’s hand and pulled him forward.

Matteo’s stomach swooped as he looked around at the liveliness of it all, the families, kids stuffing their faces with cotton candy, couples making out in line, everyone doing their level-best to make the most of this last thing, before fall fell upon them, bringing back school, pushing away the sun and the freedom and _David_. Matteo sighed.

David looked back at him with a wide grin. “What should we do first?”

“Bumper cars,” Hanna said, pressing in on Matteo’s other side, dragging Sam behind her.

“No, Gravitron!” Sam said.

David cringed. “Maybe we should wait a bit before the Gravitron.” He pressed a hand to his stomach in evidence of the wisdom of this idea, and Hanna laughed. 

“Bumper cars it is,” Matteo said, tugging on David’s hand to lead the way.

Matteo couldn’t kiss _his_ boyfriend in line in a place like this, so, instead, he stepped on David’s feet.

David glared at him, but he was obviously trying not grin. “Menace. That hurts.”

“Walk,” Matteo said.

“Excuse me?”

“Walk! Carry me.”

David laughed but obeyed, walking the few steps forward in line that had just opened up, holding Matteo to him with his hands on his back. He winced, but he was grinning, trying not to laugh. 

“Wheeee!” 

“You’re six.”

Matteo raised a brow. “You knew me when I was six.”

“Yeah, and?”

Matteo raised both brows, slowly breaking into a wide smile, and David’s eyes went wide. “No, Matteo, _no_ —”

Matteo jumped off David’s feet and spun him around, immediately leaping onto his back as David cried out in protest. Matteo latched onto David’s back like a monkey as David squealed and nearly toppled Matteo-first toward the ground. He grabbed onto the fence surrounding the ride at the last moment, leaning forward. When they’d steadied, he sent Matteo a death glare over his shoulder, and, impulsively, Matteo shot forward and kissed him. It was short, but it flustered David well enough, and Matteo grinned and climbed down from his back.

Some MAGA-cap wearing dude a couple of people behind them in line made a disgusted noise and sent Matteo and David an actually-hateful glare, but he didn’t make any move to act beyond that, so Matteo just turned around, settling for holding David’s hand for the rest of the line.

David was merciless in the bumper cars, but so was Sam, and it wasn’t long after they finally got in that they were kicked out. The four of them, having separated from the rest of the group, walked together, cracking up, toward the overwhelmingly tantalizing smell of funnel cake. Matteo wanted to get his own, but David insisted they share, and when he kissed the pout off Matteo’s mouth, tasting like fried dough and powdered sugar, Matteo found it hard to further complain.

They got their faces painted, and David crossed his eyes at Matteo to match the little alien on his cheek as Matteo got vampire fangs painted by his mouth. 

Jonas and Amira caught up with them as they were waiting in line for the Tunnel of Love. “You boys having fun? Enjoying your youth? Treasuring these memories before they slip through our fingers?”

“Not me,” Matteo said around a mouthful of cotton candy. “I’m just standing here wondering when middle age will come already!”

“That’s the spirit!”

“You deserve a medal!” Amira shouted to David over the din of screaming middle schoolers.

“For what?”

“Putting up with him!”

David grinned and grabbed at Matteo, who squawked in protest as David mussed his hair and squished his cheeks, cooing at him like a fat puppy.  
“Stop that!”

“Aw, did the mean lady hurt your feelings?”

“Yes! I’m a catch!”

Amira laughed.

They went on the Tunnel of Love, then met up with the others for the Looping Starship, the fun house, (which was, as always, less climactic than the name suggested,) and, finally, the Gravitron.

Feeling thoroughly sick, Matteo accepted David’s offer to let the others go do their own thing while the two of them paused to recuperate. When he didn’t think he might throw up at any moment anymore, Matteo accepted David’s proffered hand and followed him to the line for the Ferris Wheel.

Matteo grinned at him. “Really?”

“The Ferris Wheel is a must,” David insisted. “It’s tradition.”

It was true— they’d always gone on the Ferris Wheel together, often leaning over the side to spit and getting banned, only for a year to pass and someone who _didn’t_ ban them to be operating the Ferris Wheel and let them on again.

It was different this year, obviously. Matteo’d always felt kind of nervous, getting strapped in next to David on the Ferris Wheel; rising into the air beside him, alone, locked in. That feeling had confused him before— he _knew_ he couldn’t have been afraid of the Ferris Wheel, of all things. It wasn’t like he had a problem with heights.

He got it now. That feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he’d glanced at David all those times, their thighs pressed together, the ground disappearing beneath them seeming to dare them to act. To put into motion whatever confusing, unspoken almost-plans had been wandering around like lost travelers in both their minds. 

Now, as soon as they lifted up, Matteo leaned into David, and kissed him like he was making up for seventeen years’ worth of lost time.

David smiled under his mouth, and soon they were lost in it, so they could have been anywhere, instead of fifty feet in the air. Matteo slid his hands into David’s thick hair, burning up inside, and he felt ready. Ready for more, and ready for the future. Ready, even, for David to leave. He knew, now— he could take it. _They_ could take it. They were strong enough. By far.

“Matteo,” David whispered, as they briefly separated. The cold night wind beat at Matteo’s ears, the music of the fair faded out as he pressed his forehead to David’s, eager to hear whatever he had to say, to always accept whatever David wanted to give. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was— that it was _him_ David talked to, _him_ whose jokes David laughed at, whose hand David held. Him who David kissed on Ferris Wheels. 

“Yeah?”

“Guess where I’m going after this.”

Matteo opened his eyes, puzzled, and marveled at David’s wide grin, as he met his gaze. “Um… Jonas’s?”

David laughed. “No, I mean, not after _this_. After summer.”

Matteo frowned. “Uh, your mom’s?”

“Nah.”

Matteo went bug-eyed. David’s grin, somehow, grew. 

“No?”

“Nope.”

“Um… where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“You’re… but…”

“I talked to my parents about it before I even came home this summer,” David said. Matteo felt a warm, melting feeling in his chest, to hear David call this place home. “I’m gonna stay here for senior year. I wanted to graduate with… all of you guys.” He looked down, at their joined hands. “With you.”

“With me,” Matteo repeated, in a daze.

David looked up at him. “Is that OK?”

Matteo laughed loud and shook his head. “You’re the worst.” He surged forward, kissing David so hard he thought, for a moment, that their seat might do a 180 and topple them to the ground. He didn’t even care. David was laughing into his mouth. He’d gladly fall with that feeling.

*

“I’m being very generous,” Matteo’s mom said. “So I expect you to be respectful of my rules. You got it?”

“I got it, mom,” Matteo said, grinning. He tried to school his expression under her glare, but he couldn’t manage it, so he just grinned wider, until she finally broke, laughing and pushing him lightly away.

“All right, all right. Go. You’re making me sick.”

“Love you!”

“Young love. It’s disgusting!” She closed the door on him, he laughed and spun around. David was waiting for him, beaming. He’d been waiting, as if they had a long ways to go. Matteo laughed at the thought and took David’s hand, and they went to Jonas’s together.

It’d been tradition, back in elementary school, but they hadn’t done it in ages, since the no-sleepovers-with-potential-sex-partners rules had come into play from their various parents. This was their senior year, though, and something like nostalgia had caused everyone’s parents to cave, so the mass pre-first day of school sleepover was a-go. Girls would sleep in the living room, boys in Jonas’s. It was Matteo and David’s first over-nighter since the camping trip— since they’d gotten together— and though Matteo knew nothing was likely to happen in the company of literally all of their friends, he was nervous, anyway. Even sleeping next to David would be a thrill he hadn’t expected to come so soon, and he was giddy but also felt like he might throw up.

Almost everyone was there already when David and Matteo arrived; the house smelled of fresh-baked cookies and weed. Jonas’s parents had graciously sequestered themselves to their room, upstairs, from which Matteo could just barely make out dialogue from that HBO show about rich white people arguing. Jonas’s music mostly drowned it out; Sufjan Stevens was playing at a strangely high volume for Sufjan Stevens, and Matteo gave Jonas a look. Jonas grinned and shrugged.

David walked ahead of Matteo toward the sleeping bag and blanket fort set up around the couches. Matteo followed close behind, and when David had sat, he sprawled out before him, laying his head against David’s chest and accepting the joint Abdi handed him. David wrapped his arms around him and kissed his forehead, as Matteo tried to smile and smoke at the same time, brushing his fingers over David’s arm.

As the others arrived, Jonas took up post sitting on the edge of the couch, loudly giving directions for an absurdly simple game. He put on the same show Matteo had heard upstairs— _Succession_ , apparently— and muted it; and the group of them took less-than-organized turns shouting made up dialogue. Carlos made a lot of penis jokes. Hanna made everything gay. Sam seemed to be trying to steer the show toward fantasy, and she was pretty much succeeding, until the group was basically playing a makeshift game of Dungeons & Dragons. Amira kept trying to kill people off, but they continued to make appearances despite her best efforts. Jonas shouted, “He is risen!” every time this happened.

Matteo looked around. “What happened to Laura and Mia?”

“Making out in the kitchen,” Abdi said frankly. David made a gagging noise, and Matteo grinned.

“What?” he said, spinning in his lap, straddling him as David squawked in protest. “What’s wrong? You don’t like making out?” He covered David’s face in sloppy, wet kisses as David screamed and giggled and they got at least four pillows thrown at them from different directions.

Outside, the sun was setting, streaking the sky with red and orange, the promise of fall. But the summer warmth stuck around, and around nine, they migrated out to Jonas’s yard. The water guns appeared seemingly from thin air, and battle broke out, full of screeches and laughter until they were grinningly apologizing to Jonas’s neighbors for the noise. Matteo pulled David behind the oak tree and pressed him against it. They kissed slow, warm and getting warmer as the crickets chorused around them and their friends continued to talk and laugh in only-slightly hushed voices. Matteo pushed a hand up under David’s shirt, reveling in the feel of his hand on bare skin. David shuddered beneath him, then doubled over laughing when Matteo accidentally stuck his finger in his belly button. He cupped Matteo’s cheeks and kissed him again, the kind of fairytale kiss that probably could have woken Matteo from a supposedly-eternal sleep. He leaned into it and felt happy, tired, alive. 

“Thank your mom for me,” David whispered against Matteo’s lips.

Matteo laughed. “What? Why?”

David met Matteo’s eyes, his gaze intense and playful all at once, like David himself, like them, together. Matteo’s stomach flipped, and he felt himself smiling entirely without thought; helpless, as ever, to David’s atmosphere, like wading through the pink clouds of sunrise, that damp, promising feeling on his skin, and below it, reaching in toward his heart. “For moving next door,” David said. 

Matteo beamed and buried his face in the crook of David’s neck. David tugged him closer just as a water gun shot him in the back, and they screamed with laughter, losing their balance and falling in a heap to the ground as Jonas and Sam continued to shoot them.  
Summer was over, but somehow, even with all the neons gone back into hiding, and the clear blue sky gone with them, fall was looking bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed!!! Comments are SO appreciated <3
> 
> Since this is the last chapter, I figured I might as well share the [fic playlist](http://open.spotify.com/user/12137986524/playlist/3yuzF9sjjX0MUvBwhwqrA8?si=vkSpY5anRUGEfvduv_k2Mw)
> 
> P.S. I'm writing a fall fic for a different fandom, but as of now I'm planning on writing a davenzi Christmas fic, so though the show is over (bis bald?????), I hope you'll stick around :) <3

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi [on tumblr](http://shesarealphony.tumblr.com) :)
> 
> [fic post](http://shesarealphony.tumblr.com/post/186129587825/blister-in-the-sun-by-zeldasayre-me-david-only)


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